Not All Scars are Visible
by Elspeth1
Summary: Synopsis: 5th year at Hogwarts. Remus Lupin returns to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts, bringing his dog Snuffles with him to help patrol the Hogwarts grounds. Featuring Aurors, dementors, PTSD, longlost siblings, and reconciliations.
1. In Which a Man and a Dog get on a Train.

Disclaimer: Characters and situations all belong to JK Rowlings, not me.  Caius the raven belongs to Draqonelle, who has kindly allowed me to borrow him (Vesta McGonagall is hers too).  She also owns the Remus-in-the-closet incident, Caligula Snape, and young Sirius's boggart.  In addition, I got the name Polaris Black for Sirius's sister from someone else's fanfic, but I can't remember whose (her character, however, belongs entirely to me and Draqonelle).

Posted by:  Elspeth (also known as L Squared)

Ships:  Professor Sinistra and an adorable black dog, hopefully hints at a future Snape/McGonagall

Not All Scars are Visible,

 Or

 "Why Magic and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder Don't Mix."

Chapter One:  _In Which a Man and a Dog get on a Train._

            Remus Lupin stepped through the barrier onto platform 9 and ¾, battered leather briefcase in hand.  All around him was chaos.  Stacks of luggage were being pushed carried, or levitated, owls and cats were running or flying around loose as their young owners scrambled to catch them, and children and their parents were saying goodbye.

            "Puppy!" a little girl of three or four shouted enthusiastically, pointing excitedly at Padfoot, who was standing next to Remus wearing a collar and lead and a long-suffering expression.  "Puppy!" she shrieked again, tugging on the robes of a rather harried-looking witch.

            "Not now, dear."

            "But, Mommy, a puppy!"

            Padfoot was eyeing the four year old uneasily, nervous at having any attention directed towards himself.  Remus reached down and ruffled one silky, floppy ear reassuringly, then gave Padfoot's lead a tug.  "Come on, ickle puppy-kins.  Let's go get on the Express."

            Out of the corner of his eye, Remus caught a glimpse of bright red hair.  He turned to get a better look, guessing that it was probably the Weasleys.

            At that moment, Padfoot took off, yanking the lead out of Remus' hand and barreling across the platform toward the red-headed family (it _was_ the Weasleys, with Harry right in the middle of them), knocking people out of the way as only an extremely large dog can.  So much for his desire to be inconspicuous.

            Harry looked up at the sound of loud, joyous barking only to be practically bowled over by the big, black dog as he bounced up delightedly, tail waving.

            "Snuffles!  What are you doing here?  Eew, yuck!  Stop!  Don't lick me!  Get down!"

            "Aw, he's so cute," Ginny Weasley cooed, leaning over to give Padfoot a pat on the head.  "Who's dog is he?"

            "Mine, I'm afraid," Remus said as he strode toward the group, reaching down (although not very far down, Padfoot's head was nearly on a level with his hip) to get a firm grip on the dog's collar.  "You hyperactive idiot, do you want the entire platform to notice you?  Bad Snuffles!  He's not very well trained yet," he apologized.

            Padfoot favored him with a meaningful glare.  _I will get you for this, Moony_, his eyes promised silently.

            "Professor Lupin!  What are you doing here?  Are you going to be teaching at Hogwarts again?"

            "Headmaster Dumbledore has convinced me to take the Defense Against the Dark Arts position again," Remus explained.  "He suggested that I bring Snuffles here with me to help patrol the Hogwarts grounds."

            Fred and George were regarding "Snuffles" with unabashed admiration. 

 "Merlin, that thing is huge!" 

"Where'd you get it?"  

"Is it trained to attack?"

"Can you set it on Snape?"

"Professor Lupin got him from the pound," Harry volunteered.  "I saw him at the end of last year.  He nearly bit the Minister of Magic."

"Brilliant!"

"Why's he got a stupid name like "Snuffles"?  I'd of called him "Killer."

Ron choked.  "Um, not a good name, not really."

"Oh dear," Molly Weasley interjected.  "This isn't that dog that was in the infirmary with Harry at the end of the…I mean, at the end of last year, is it?  Are you sure you should be bringing him to Hogwarts?"  She paused, regarding Padfoot more critically.  "And what are you feeding him, anyway?  He's far to thin."  Ex-convict or not, as somebody close to Harry, Sirius clearly counted as an honorary Weasley, and thus as someone to be worried about and fussed over at every opportunity.

            "Not my fault," Remus protested.  "He must have spent half the summer running around wild; you can't keep him penned up or he goes nuts."

            Padfoot favored him with another offended look as the group began straggling towards the express, luggage bobbing along merrily behind them.

            Once all of the various trunks, bags, and owl cages had been installed on the train, Molly and Arthur said goodbye to their children, Molly giving everyone, especially Harry, a huge hug before stepping back down to the platform.  

            "I want you to be careful this year," she told Ron and Harry firmly.  "I don't want anymore owls from Madam Pomfrey about broken bones or concussions.  And you two," she turned to the twins, "I want to see a respectable number of NEWTs from you this year.  I'm still disappointed with your OWLs.  And I don't want to hear anymore about this joke shop business."

            "She doesn't know we'll be setting up a mail order catalog as soon as we get to Hogwarts," Remus heard Fred whisper to Harry.  "Zonko's has already agreed to order three dozen canary creams."

            "I want you to promise me you'll stay on the grounds this year," Arthur Weasley added.  "No more secret trips to the forbidden forest or Hogsmeade.  The Missing Wizards department has had ten disappearances this month, nearly triple last year's total."

            "Yeah, of course.  We promise," Ron said, in exactly the same tone Remus himself had once used to protest that he and James had no intention of planting anymore booby traps in the girls' dormitory.  He vowed on the spot to keep a close eye on Harry and his friends this year.

            Once the Express had pulled out of the station, Harry and Ron found Hermione reading a book in an empty compartment, and dragged Remus and the still securely leashed Padfoot inside, closing the door firmly behind them.

            "Professor Lupin."  Hermione jumped to her feet, dropping the book—"Studying for the OWLs: Prepare for the Tests that will Determine your Future Jobs, Academic Career, and Place in Life"—back onto the seat.  "You're back!  Are you going to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts again? "

            "Yes.  The school governors really wanted a top-flight auror or ex-auror, someone like Arabella Figg or Vesta McGonagall, but they were all too busy.  Plus, it gives Snuffles here an excuse to be near Hogwarts," Remus sat down in one of the padded seats, next to the window, leaning down as he made his last comment to ruffle Padfoot's ears.

            After a quick glance toward the closed door, the big black dog shimmered and was replaced by Sirius Black, seated cross-legged at Remus's feet, still with the collar around his neck.

            "Will you stop putting yourself down!" he said in an exasperated tone.  "You'd make at least as good an auror as Arabella, probably better.  I went to see her this summer," he explained to Harry and the others.  "I'm not sure how much of her 'senile old bat' routine is an act.  All those cats."  He shuddered.  "I think a couple of them left scars."  He pointed to the end of his nose, where two parallel scratches could still be faintly seen.  "Oh, and Moony, leave my ears alone, will you.  And stop tugging on that stupid leash.  I swear, you're getting some sort of twisted kick out of this."

            "You're the one who wanted a leather collar."

            "Yeah, but I wanted one with spikes on it, not something with a cutesy little brass name plate."

            "The one with the spikes made you look like a junkyard dog from an American movie."

            Remus realized that the three teenagers were staring at Sirius and himself in something almost like surprise.  They had never seen the two of them together in any kind of relaxed situation, he realized, only that horrible scene in the Shrieking Shack.

            "You sound like me and Ron," Harry said.

            Sirius smiled, one of those rare youthful grins that seemed to drop decades from his face, though not from his eyes.  "You've never really seen Moony and me together when we're not trying to kill somebody, have you?"

            "I shouldn't have stopped you two, that time in the Shrieking Shack.  I should have let you kill Wormtail."

            "No, you were right."  Remus reassured him hastily.  "They would have sent me to Azkaban and Sirius straight to the dementors if we'd gone ahead with it."

            "Nothing that little shit has done is in any way your fault," Sirius said, grey-blue eyes fixed intently on Harry's green ones.  "Don't feel guilty about it.  And anyway, as soon as I get my teeth around him, the situation will be rectified.  I'll shake him back and forth until his little rodent spine snaps."

            Hermione looked slightly shocked at this graphic threat, but Ron grinned in an evil fashion reminiscent of the twins at their worst.  Sirius shook himself in a very canine-like manner and resumed speaking, his tone softer this time.

            "Speaking of rodents, how'd you make out this summer?  I've seen that so-called family of yours—your bloody horror of a cousin threw a rock at me when I went to see Arabella.  They did treat you okay, didn't they?  I mean, you went through some rough things last school year."

            "Of course.  I'm fine.  You don't need to worry about me."  Harry surveyed Sirius, who was still sitting on the floor, back against the seat, in a critical, very adult manner.  "Are _you_ okay?  Ron's mom was right, you look really dreadful—though your hair's much better really, clean," he added.  "It looks kind of like Bill Weasley's, only black instead of red."

            "I'm s'pposed to worry about you; it's my job as a semi-parental figure.  I also get to nag you about your marks and embarrass you in public."

            Remus, meanwhile, gave Harry, who was obviously nearly as concerned about his Godfather as Sirius was about him, a reassuring wink.  "I'm sure the house elves will have lots of kibble for him at Hogwarts."

            "Like Hell.  The day you feed me dogfood is the day your pumpkin juice gets laced with silver nitrate."

^_~

Next up, Chapter Two: In Which Lupin Teaches The Fourth-years about Boggarts and Snape and McGonagall have a Civil Conversation.

Stay tuned and learn Colin Creevy's boggart and Professor Sinistra's first name!  Plus, there will be angst.


	2. In Which Remus Teaches the Fourth-years ...

Disclaimer: Characters and situations all belong to JK Rowlings, not me.  Caius the raven belongs to Dragonelle, who has kindly allowed me to borrow him (Vesta McGonagall is hers too).  She also owns the Remus-in-the-closet incident, Caligula Snape, and young Sirius's boggart.  In addition, I got the name Polaris Black for Sirius's sister from someone else's fanfic, but I can't remember whose (her character, however, belongs entirely to me and Dragonelle).

Posted by:  Elspeth (also known as L Squared)

Ships:  Professor Sinistra and an adorable black dog, hopefully hints at a future Snape/McGonagall

Chapter Two_:  In Which Lupin Teaches the Fourth-years about Boggarts and Snape and McGonagall have a Civil Conversation._

            With a few notable exceptions, most of the student body was delighted by the reappearance of "Professor Lupin."  Those students in their third year and up remembered him fondly as one of the only DaDA teachers in recent years who hadn't been either totally ineffectual or secretly working for Voldemort (or, in Quirell's case, both), and the new first and second years seemed to find his lycanthropy to be more cool and exciting than frightening (once Professor McGonagall had put a stop to the rumor, most likely originating with the Weasley twins, that he ate any student who failed an exam—the new, updated version that had replaced it was that he fed them to Snuffles).

            "Snuffles" himself was fast on his way to becoming the unofficial Hogwarts mascot.  The Gryffindors (those who didn't know his true identity) had adopted him as a sort of house-wide pet, and had ceased to wonder exactly how he kept getting into their common room (and the kitchen, and Lupin's DaDA classroom, and just about everywhere else in the castle except Snape's dungeon).  The other professors had grown used to Padfoot's presence in the teacher's lounge, where he curled up in front of the fire and silently listened in on their conversations—and engaged in shameless sucking up to Claire Sinistra, who turned out to have an unsuspected weakness for dogs.

            " 'Ows my widdle Snuffle-wuffles, is Remus taking good care of you?" she was cooing one evening when Remus entered the room.  "Remus, his fur is all matted and his toe nails need clipping."  She returned to rubbing Padfoot's belly and playing with his ears.  "Oh, do you like that, baby?  Yes, you're such a good doggie."

            "You're disgusting," Remus informed his friend as he settled into the next chair with a stack of lesson plans.  If it were possible for dogs to smirk, Padfoot was doing so.

            Remus couldn't help smiling as he listened to the regular whump-whump-whump of Padfoot's tail on the flagstones.  It was good to see his friend happy for a change.  He had seen the scars on Sirius's wrists, gruesome remnants of his time in Azkaban, heard the moans and cries in the middle of the night from the nightmares that he later denied having, noticed the difference between the old hyperactive and over-confident Sirius and the new quiet, brooding one, and he couldn't help but worry.

            In a way, it was a relief to see Padfoot up to his old tricks again, though he wished his old friend would employ his "I'm-pathetic-and-neglected-and-starving-and-no-one-ever-feeds-me-so-please-give-me-that-bowl-of-ice-cream/slice-of-roastbeef/mug-of-butterbeer-or-I'll-shrivel-up-and-die" look in the Great Hall at mealtimes a bit more often.  If nothing else, it would make Sinistra stop berating him for not feeding his "pwecious Snuffle-wuffles" properly.

            "If I hear her cooing over that wretched animal one more time, I am going to become ill."  Severus Snape muttered to himself, as he exited his chair near the fire to switch to one in the far corner of the room, as far away from "Snuffles" and Sinistra as was humanly possible.  

            "For once, I can sympathize with you," Minerva McGonagall muttered back.  Much as she hated to agree with Snape about anything, she never had been able to bring herself to like dogs.  "I suppose that monstrosity of Lupin's does have his good points, though.  At least he keeps Sibyl away."

            "Thank God for that," Snape agreed.  "I just know she's dying to tell me that my future is full of agony and misfortune and that my aura is sinister and dark.  I'm tempted to add a little something to her tealeaves.  I wonder if her "inner eye" would be able to detect _that_."

            "Find something unpleasant and untraceable but nonfatal, and I'd be tempted to help you.  My fourth years always come in traumatized after her lessons.  I believe last class she predicted that Ginny Weasley would "have a nasty fall" during the first quiddich match.  The poor child will probably be so apprehensive, she'll fall off her own broom and turn it into a self-fulfilling prophecy."

            "Ah, yes, that would be a terrible shame."  Snape's tone was suspiciously dry.

            "Why Severus, you sound almost cheerful at the prospect.  Are you implying that your house can't win unless the Gryffindor keeper is out of action?"'

            "Hardly," Snape looked affronted.  Quidditch was a continuing sore point between the two of them, due largely to the fact that Slytherin hadn't won a game against Gryffindor since Harry Potter had arrived at Hogwarts.  Though Snape, unlike Minerva, had never been a player himself (she didn't think he'd so much as touched a broom since the day he'd gotten his apparition license) he threw himself into directing the Slytherin quidditch team with the same enthusiastic partisanship he displayed in all aspects of inter-house competition.  "We smashed Hufflepuff last week two-hundred and ten to thirty."

            "Hufflepuff has a new captain and an inexperienced seeker.  And their two best chasers graduated last year."  She let the statement speak for itself.

            Snape snarled—though, admittedly, in a rather half-hearted manner—and changed the subject to the upcoming Halloween ball, which he had again been pressed into chaperoning.  His traditional annual attempt to convince Dumbledore to cancel the affair, or at least excuse him from attending, had predictably met with failure.

            By the time he somewhat abruptly excused himself to prepare for the next morning's seventh-year potions class, they had been conversing, with only a handful of mild insults exchanged, for nearly ten minutes.  It had to be some sort of record.

^_~

            When the Gryffindor fourth-years entered the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom the next afternoon, they found Professor Lupin standing beside his desk, one hand resting on top of a large wooden trunk, which was rocking back and forth slightly in a disturbing manner.

            "What's in there?" Latoya Jordan asked somewhat nervously.  With an older brother who was a close friend of the Weasley twins, she had learned to be wary of unidentified things in moving boxes.

            Lupin smiled.  "Don't worry, Latoya, it's doesn't bite.  It's only a boggart."

            Most of the students were not exactly reassured by this news, though Colin Creevy looked positively ecstatic with anticipation.  His ever-present camera was already out and waiting on his desk, ready to record his classmates' (and his own) greatest fears for posterity.  Someday, that child would make a fortune as a photographer for _The Daily Prophet._

            "Normally, boggarts are part of the third year curriculum, but I understand that you didn't cover them last year, so when Madame Pinch found this one lurking behind a set of shelves in the back of the restricted section, I thought I'd bring him in for you to have a go at.

            "Now, before we start, can anyone here tell me a little about boggarts?"

            Ginny Weasley's hand immediately went up.

            "Yes, Ginny"

            "Boggarts are shape changers," Ginny announced.  "They live in dark places like closets and the spaces underneath beds, and they turn into whatever they think will scare you the most."

            "Exactly right.  Thank you, Ginny."  Remus smiled approvingly at Ginny.  The youngest Weasley was one of his best students (her detailed and enthusiastically researched essay on how to kill werewolves had actually given him nightmares).  "Boggarts assume the shape of their victim's greatest fear, and thus they appear to each person in a different form.  This places them at a disadvantage when dealing with a group of people.  Can anyone tell me why?  Colin?"

            "Because we're all going to be scared of different things, and it won't know which one to pick?"

            "Precisely.  A boggart confronted with several wizards at once becomes confused.  Should he be a mummy or a manticore?  A blast-ended skrewt or Professor Snape?"  There was a brief flurry of giggles as everyone recalled the infamous tale of Neville's Snape-in-drag boggart from two years ago.  "He becomes frantic and begins to panic—and occasionally turns into some quite amusing things by mistake.

            "And amusement, of course, is the secret to defeating a boggart.  Boggarts, like their cousins the dementors, thrive on terror, and laughter is the antithesis of fear.  When faced with a boggart, the best strategy is to use the riddikulatum charm, which forces it from a frightening shape into a humorous one.

"To invoke the spell, you point your wand at the boggart and say—repeat after me please—_riddikulus_."

            "_Riddikulus_," everyone echoed.

            "Good," Lupin said.  "Remember to stress the second syllable.  However, saying the charm is the easy part.  As you say it, you have to picture in your mind the form you want the boggart to assume.  Remember that however frightening it may appear, it is not actually a snake or a mummy or whatever it appears to be, only an imitation.  If you react to it as you would to a real mummy, it feeds off your fear and will only grow larger and stronger. Yes, Colin?"  The boy had his hand up and was practically twitching with excitement.

            "Can I go first?"

            "Ah, a volunteer.  Wonderful.  Yes, of course you may.  Come up to the front of the classroom please, Colin.  Get your wand ready.  Now, before I open the trunk, what is it that you find the most frightening?"

            "Clowns," Colin answered promptly.

            "Clowns?" Ginny asked incredulously.  "How can you be scared of clowns?  They're supposed to be funny."

            "They're not funny, they're demonic and creepy, with their horrid painted on smiles…  Haven't you ever seen Stephen King's IT?"

            "That's a muggle movie, isn't it?"

            "Actually, a lot of students with muggle parents have boggarts inspired by muggle horror films," Lupin said.  "There was a student in my year at Hogwarts whose boggart turned into a brain eating pod-person from outer space.  Anyway, to get back on topic, how would you go about making a clown look less threatening?"

            "I would wash its make-up off," Colin answered instantly.  "It's the fake, white faces that make them scary."

            "Alright then, when I open this trunk, the boggart will emerge and assume the form of a clown.  I want you to cast the riddikulatum charm at it and visualize the clown drenched with a bucket of water, with all of its face paint washed off."

            Remus lifted the trunk's lid, and out jumped a fully costumed circus clown, fully wigged and painted.  Colin recoiled back from it, then brandished his wand at it, stammering "_Riddikulus_."

            A red bucket full of water appear out of thin air, upending itself over the clown's head and drenching it completely, leaving the make-up running in colored streaks down its face.  As the students began to laugh, Remus called John Spinnet forward to take Collin's place.  With a pop, the bedraggled clown became a tall, white skeleton, which began to walk towards John menacingly, before—"_Riddikulus_"—falling to pieces with a loud clatter.

            The students had just humiliated both Ginny Weasley's basilisk and Latoya Jordan's giant tarantula (which she tangled up in its own web), when the classroom door creaked open and Snuffles poked his head in, exactly as he had done dozens of times before.  The tied up spider, rolling across the room to escape the students' shrieks of laughter, came to halt in front of the black dog and changed into the tall, hooded figure of a dementor.

            Every hair on end, Snuffles flattened himself to the floor in a posture of abject terror.  Waves of coldness seemed to roll of the cloaked form as it advanced on the whimpering canine, who was frozen with fear.

            Remus stepped forward, blocking the dementor's path.  It flickered indecisively for a moment, then changed shape again to become a full moon, hovering in the air on level with his face.  As Snuffles fled to safety beneath his desk, Remus, wand at the ready, forced the boggart back into the trunk and slammed the lid.

            "Right. I think that's enough boggart for now," he said, flipping the latch closed.  "You can come out now, Snuffles, it's gone."   He turned to face the class, who had gone pale from the chilling effect of the dementor—even an imitation dementor could be emotionally draining, as his sessions with Harry two years ago had shown him only too well.  "Well," he began, "that was unexpected.  Class will be ending a little early today.  I want you all to go down to the kitchen and get the house elves to give you some chocolate; you'll probably need it after that little scene."

            Most of the students began to drift out of the room, too shaken to be as pleased as they would normally have been about getting out of class early.  Ginny, however, stayed behind, walking over to where Remus was crouched down beside his desk.  

            "Is Snuffles okay?" she asked, as he attempted, without success, to get the trembling dog to emerge from beneath his desk.

            "He's just scared," Remus reassured her.  "He'll be fine.  You ought to go to the kitchens with the others now and get that chocolate."  Ginny had been sitting up in the front row of desks, as she always did, and had been closer to the boggart/dementor than anyone else except him and Padfoot.  She looked remarkably calm, considering, but her face was unusually pale, freckles standing out starkly.

            "I will, I just wanted to ask something about the boggart first.  Who's was it?  It wasn't mine, 'cause mine's a basilisk," she shuddered slightly as she said the word, "and it wasn't yours, 'cause yours is a moon.  So whose was it?  Was it Snuffles'?  I didn't know boggarts could work on animals."

            "They can if the animal is sufficiently intelligent, like a kneezle or a Great Raven."  Or an animagus, but he couldn't tell her that.  Ginny was more than capable of putting two and two together, and while she would never intentionally blow Sirius's cover (once the situation had been explained to her), the knowledge would only put her at risk, from the ministry's Hit Wizards if nothing else.

            "Or a really smart dog too, I guess," Ginny said, bending down to pat Padfoot on the head.  He shivered and didn't respond, staying curled up under the desk in a defensive ball.  "Poor baby, the nasty boggart really scared you, didn't he.  Too bad dogs can't do the riddikulatum charm."

            Once the door closed behind her, Remus returned to the task of extricating Padfoot from his hiding place.

            "Come on, Padfoot, snap out of it.  It's okay."  No response.

            "Sirius, if you don't come out from under that desk right now, I'll tell Severus that you're scared of boggarts."

            The sharpness seemed to work where coaxing hadn't.  Padfoot's head emerged cautiously from beneath the big piece of furniture, followed by the rest of his body.  There was a shimmer, and then Sirius was sitting on the floor by the desk, his back against the wood and his knees drawn up to his chest.

            "Sorry I buggered up your lesson, Moony.  I didn't mean to… I didn't know…"  He broke off, then made a bitter, half laughing sound.  "I guess I kinda freaked out there, didn't I?"

            "No more than I did the first time I saw a boggart.  At least you didn't lock yourself in the closet."

            One corner of Sirius's mouth actually twitched into something close to a smile.  "It took forever to get you to come out of there.  We were afraid we'd have to get Filch to come break the door in."  The twisted sort-of-smile flickered momentarily into a reasonable facsimile of his old grin.  "'Least your boggart wasn't as humiliating as Snape's."

            Remus felt his lips twitching at the memory, though from an adult perspective it wasn't quite so much amusing as it was disquieting—that third-year Dark Arts class had been his only exposure to Caligula Snape, but even as a thirteen year old, he'd been very, very glad his parents weren't anything like _that_, and didn't have any trouble imagining why anyone who'd been raised by Snape senior would fear him.

            "His wasn't nearly so interesting as yours was," Remus reminded his friend, trying to dispel the lingering bits of that haunted look in his eyes.  "I don't think Professor Bale knew quite what to make of it.  His background in science fiction B movies was a little lacking."

            "I guess I've grown up a little since then."  Again that weary half smile.  "You know you're getting old when you can't laugh your fears away anymore."

            "If you're old, what does that make me?"

            "Seeing as you're three months older, bloody ancient."

            "Bastard."  Remus reached down and hauled his friend to his feet.  It as easier than it should have been, even considering his lycanthropy-enhanced strength.  "Come on, change back before someone sees you, so I can drag you up to my room by the collar and shove chocolate down your throat."

^_~

Next up, Chapter Three: _ In Which There is Pondering on Scars and Nightmares, and Remus Borrows a Potion_

Y'all get serious angst, severe emotional trauma (bad, bad puns, shoot me now) and an introduction to Snape's familiar (sorry, "Pawn to Queen" fans, it's not a snake—but it can talk).


	3. In Which There is Pondering on Scars and...

Disclaimer: Characters and situations all belong to JK Rowlings, not me.  Caius the raven belongs to Draqonelle, who has kindly allowed me to borrow him (Vesta McGonagall is hers too).  She also owns the Remus-in-the-closet incident, Caligula Snape, and young Sirius's boggart.  In addition, I got the name Polaris Black for Sirius's sister from someone else's fanfic, but I can't remember whose (her character, however, belongs entirely to me and Draqonelle).

Posted by:  Elspeth (also known as L Squared)

Ships:  Professor Sinistra and an adorable black dog, hopefully hints at a future Snape/McGonagall

Chapter Three:  _In Which There is Pondering on Scars and Nightmares, and Remus Borrows a Potion._

            "No, stop…no…" the sound of the tortured moans cut into Remus' slumber.  Deep inside him, the wolf reared its head, protective instincts aroused.  His packmate was hurting.  No one was allowed to hurt his packmates; they were his, his to defend…

            The low, threatening growl that emerged from Remus' throat startled him fully awake.  He lifted his head from the pillow, turning automatically toward the couch where Sirius was sleeping.  The other wizard was twitching and writhing in his sleep, face contorted into an expression of terror, breath coming in protesting gasps.  "Please, no…"

            "Sirius."  Remus was out of his bed and beside the couch in two bounds.  "Wake up."  He shook Sirius's shoulder gently.

            Blue eyes popped open and stared wildly around, unfocused and filled with fear.  

            "It's okay, Padfoot; it was only a dream."  

            Sirius was shaking, face white and eyes ringed with shadows, their pupils huge and dilated.  Slowly, he focused on Remus, and sense began to seep back into those haunted eyes.

            "You were having a nightmare," Remus said.  "Screaming bloody murder.  I woke up and thought someone was attacking us."

            Sirius drew a shuddering breath, sitting up and putting his head in his hands.  "Bloody sodding dreams," he muttered into his hands.  "I don't know which are the worst: the ones where Harry is dead, the ones where the dementors are coming for me, or the ones where Lily and James…" his voice trailed off.

            Remus laid a hand on Sirius's arm, feeling muscles quivering uncontrollably under his palm, and skin cold as ice and covered with goosebumps.  Not good.

            "Come on, Sirius, it's okay.  Harry is safe is Gryffindor tower and the dementors are all penned up in Azkaban."

            "No they're not."  Sirius pulled his hands away from his face and glanced up at Remus through tangles of hair pulled loose from its ponytail by his tossing and turning.  "They're out.  You didn't hear it from Ron?  It was all over the Gryffindor common room when I went to check on Harry.  They left.  The Death Eaters came last night and they all left."  His voice sounded odd, distant and far too calm.  "They could be anywhere."  He looked down again, still shivering and rubbing absentmindedly at his scarred wrists.

            Remus felt the hairs on the back of his own neck rising at the news, but managed to conceal the reaction.  He reached over and turned Sirius's face toward his, forcing his friend to meet his eyes.  "Calm down.  You're being irrational.  Nothing can hurt you inside Hogwarts, you know that."

            Sirius sighed and leaned his face into Remus's hand, like a dog seeking reassurance.  "Yeah, I know that, but apparently my unconscious doesn't."

            Remus settled himself down onto the couch next to his friend, one arm around the bony shoulders.  Too bony, definitely thinner than they had been even last week.  He didn't think Sirius had gotten so much as one decent night's sleep since the boggart incident a week ago, and the nightmares were getting more and more frequent.  And this new defection of the dementors to Voldemort couldn't possibly have helped.

            "You really are a mess, Padfoot," he said gently.  "I thought we agreed I was supposed to be the unstable one in this relationship."

            That got him a faint attempt at a smile.  "You are unstable.  You get worse PMS than my sister used to."  The attempted smile crumbled away again.  "It's not your fault I turned out to be neurotic."

            "You're not neurotic.  Look, do you think you can handle it if I leave for a few minutes?  I'm going to go down to the kitchen to get you some hot chocolate."

            "Moony, you don't have to do that."

            "Listen to the DaDA professor: you need chocolate.  I'll bring back two cups.  Spiked with Bailey's."  Remus pulled himself to his feet and headed for the door, but not for the kitchen, at last, not immediately.  Sirius's chocolate was going to be spiked alright, but judging by the fact that his friend still had not stopped shaking, he was going to need something stronger than Bailey's.

            Remus didn't relish going to Snape's quarters, but there was no other way to get what he wanted at this time of night, and, really, no other person he could afford to obtain it from.  Poppy Pomfrey would see through his lies in a moment, would know the potion wasn't meant for him, and he couldn't afford to have her wondering whom it was really intended for.

            Miraculously, not only did he make it all the way down to the dungeons without encountering Peeves, but when he paused outside Snape's office, he found the door open a crack, a thin line of light seeping out from underneath it.  Apparently, he wasn't the only one up late.

            Tentatively, he knocked on the door.

            "Who in Merlin's name is it?"  Snape's voice snarled.  "Do you have any idea what _time_ it is?"

            "Some hours after midnight, I would guess," Remus answered, nudging the massive wooden door open slightly and stepping into the doorway.  It was surprisingly deep for all it's low height and narrow width—the doors in the dungeon were built for strength.  

The glow from the twin pair of candlesticks on Snape's desk danced eerily across the score of glass jars lining the room's stone walls, the flicking illumination giving a grotesque appearance of movement to the largely unidentifiable objects floating therein, and refracting a hypnotic pattern of liquid ripples onto the ceiling.  The candlelight also illuminated Snape's scowling face as he sat behind the desk, bent, quill in hand, over a pile of scolls.

"It looks like I'm not the only one having trouble sleeping."

"Lupin.  Is it not enough for you to wreak havoc on the nights of the full moon?  Must you extend your nocturnal depredations to the rest of the month as well?"

Lupin, trying to muster a suitably polite and nonconfrontational answer, was interrupted in mid-thought as what he had assumed to be a stuffed crow perching on a corner on Snape's desk suddenly moved, turning its head and regarding him with a glittering, unblinking stare unnervingly reminiscent of its master's.

"Wolf," it announced in an odd, croaking voice.  "Wolf.  Ten points from Grif-in-dor."  It let out a cackle disturbingly similar to Snape's own malicious laughter.

"Excellent observation," Snape said silkily, lips twitching in a thin, amused smile.

            "Sev-a-rus," the bird croaked, hopping sideways and cocking its head hopefully.  "Raat?"

            "You may as well cease that now, Caius.  I assure you, it is not the slightest bit endearing."

            "Rat?  Raat?"

            "No.  And you can't have any of those pickled newts' eyes either; they're for the third-years' class tomorrow."

            "Is that Caius?" Remus asked, mildly surprised.  "I didn't know you still had him."

            "Great Ravens live for an exceedingly long time," Snape said in a slightly snappish tone, clearly embarrassed to have been caught showing affection toward anything.  "Sometimes they even outlive their owners.  You of all people ought to know that"

            "That wasn't exactly what I meant."

            "I know.  He came back after I started teaching here."  His expression discouraged further comment.

            Aside from their unusually long lifespans, Great Ravens were known for two things: their high intelligence, and their unwillingness to serve any wizard they judged unworthy.  It was a rare dark wizard who managed to hold on to a Great Raven as a familiar, though they often kept other members of the _corvidae_ family.  Of course, there had been some speculation back in their student days as to whether the unusually small Caius was actually a Great Raven at all—Sirius had always opined that he was simply a rather moth-eaten crow with social pretensions.

            "I assume you didn't come poking your nose into my dungeon merely to discuss my familiar, Lupin," Snape said, changing the subject.  "What are you after?"

            This was going to be awkward.

            "Well, ah, there was a certain kind of potion I needed, and I would prefer not to go to Poppy about it."

            "And so you thought you'd come whining to me?"  Snape's voice was sneering.  "What do you want; you won't need the wolfsbane for at least another five days."

            How was he going to ask this without giving too much away?  

            "I was wondering if you would mind mixing up a dreamless sleep potion for me," Remus said, feeling his face heat slightly as he anticipated the blast of sarcasm he was surely about to receive.

He was not disappointed.

"Oh, is the poor werewolf having trouble sleeping? We can't have our esteemed Dark Arts professor performing under par because he's tired—not that anyone would notice a difference anyway."

Nevertheless, Snape got to his feet and crossed the room to open a wooden cabinet on the far wall, withdrawing a small blue bottle.  He pulled out the stopper and decanted a small amount into a glass vial from a stack on one shelf, then thrust it ungraciously into Remus' hand.

"Here," he snapped.  "Put two drops into something liquid and drink it.  Be careful; it's very powerful and I don't know if it's ever been tested on werewolves."

"What is it?"  Remus regarded the liquid in the vial gingerly.  He wouldn't put it past Snape to try and poison Sirius (or at least, subject him to some rather unpleasant side effects), but the Potions Master could have no way of knowing who the potion was actually intended for, so it should presumably be safe.  Still…

"Wormwood and asphodel, among other things.  It can be highly addictive if overused, so don't come asking me to give you more when that runs out.  And don't try to brew up more on your own; you'll get the proportions wrong and end up poisoning someone."  Seeing Remus' raised eyebrows, he added: "I happened to have it on hand, and I'm not sure that something weaker would work properly on you anyway.  I could mix you up some animal tranquilizers, if you'd prefer."

"No, this will be fine, thank you," Remus assured him, refusing to rise to the bait.

As he left Snape's office, he inspected the vial in his hands thoughtfully, a stray tendril of curiosity prickling in the back of his mind.  If the Draught of Living Death (he had never been a potions expert, but he remembered what potion wormwood and asphodel went into) was "very powerful" and "highly addictive", how was it that Snape "just happened" to have a bottle—a half empty bottle—of it in his office cabinet?  And why had he given any of it to Remus at all?

^_~

Snape glowered at the door viciously as it thudded shut softly behind Lupin's departing form.  Already, he was regretting having given the DaDA professor any aid whatsoever, let alone that particular little mixture.  Oh, it would work, he had no doubt of that; experience would have told him so even if professional pride did not.  But now the werewolf would be curious, would wonder why he would have such a thing in his office, would, perhaps, pinpoint some vulnerability in his offer of help, however ungracious it had been.  

It had been an impulsive act, an abrupt decision with no forethought involved, prompted by a moment of sympathy that he had no intention of ever revealing to the other man and was even now regretting.  Nightmares…no wonder Lupin always looked like hell.  If the werewolf were desperate enough to come to him, and to come in the middle of the night, red-eyed and obviously sleep deprived, it would not be over a mere handful of bad dreams.  No, it would take the kind of dreams that jolted you awake screaming and sweating, the kind that ripped open all the scars on your soul and left the wounds of memory fresh and bleeding, the kind that came again and again, until the haunting specter of them drove away even the thought of sleep.  The kind of dreams that led you to discover that the quiet hours of the night were an ideal time to grade essays, and to remember that many potions worked best when brewed between midnight and four a.m.

Firmly, Snape returned his attention to tonight's stack of essays, making an involuntary sound of disgust when he saw the name printed timidly atop the next one.

"Longbottom."

Caius twitched his feathers slightly at the sound of the name and cackled softly. "Boom.  Ten points from Grif-in-dor."

^_~

Next up, Chapter Four:  _In Which NevilleLongbottom Melts a Cauldron and Snape and McGonagall Argue._

There will be snark, insults, collateral damage, and Unresolved Sexual Tension.


	4. In Which Neville Longbottom Melts a Caul...

Disclaimer: Characters and situations all belong to JK Rowlings, not me.  Caius the raven belongs to Draqonelle, who has kindly allowed me to borrow him (Vesta McGonagall is hers too).  She also owns the Remus-in-the-closet incident, Caligula Snape, and young Sirius's boggart.  In addition, I got the name Polaris Black for Sirius's sister from someone else's fanfic, but I can't remember whose (her character, however, belongs entirely to me and Draqonelle).

Posted by:  Elspeth (also known as L Squared)

Ships:  Professor Sinistra and an adorable black dog, hopefully hints at a future Snape/McGonagall

Chapter Four_:  In Which Neville Longbottom Melts a Cauldron and Snape and McGonagall Argue._

            The fifth-years' potions lesson had started off unusually well.  Snape had pointed to the list of potions ingredients on the board and snapped off the instructions for making a Binding Potion, then had returned to the front of the classroom to stand there vulture-like and glower at the students, as if daring them to so much as put a foot wrong.  For Snape, this was comparatively pleasant behavior—Snape in a bad mood would already have made at least one sneering remark about Hermione, snarled three or more about Harry, who had been rather jumpy since the news of the dementors' defection had gotten out and thus presented an even easier target than usual, and would have taken at least two points from one of the Gryffindors for some awesome transgression such as taking notes with a scratchy quill, or stirring his cauldron in the wrong direction.

            Everyone should have known that it was too good to last.

            Snape had begun making his round of the classroom, peering into cauldrons to inspect the color and viscosity of potions, criticizing Gryffindors and praising Slytherins ("excellent work, Mr. Malfoy,"  "too much ground convolvulus vine, Mr. Finnigan,").  Somehow, he could be more threatening just standing behind you and watching than most teacher could be when bending over one's final exam with a red-inked quill in hand.  Dean Thomas had once remarked that "He could give looming lessons to Bela Lugosi."

            It was when Snape swept over to critique Neville's potion (wearing the self-satisfied smile of a predator scenting prey) that disaster struck.

            "Mr. Longbottom," he purred silkily, seemingly materializing out of nowhere to appear at Neville's elbow.  "Just what do you think you are doing?"

            Neville jumped involuntarily and let out a squeak of startled fight.  As he did so, the empty beaker he had been holding in one hand (having obviously just emptied the contents into his potion) fell into his cauldron with a resounding splash, sending liquid flying.

            All of the students near Neville jumped hastily away, but a few were not quick enough.  Pansy Parkington let out an agonized shriek as the substance—which bore very little resemblance to a Binding Potion—drenched the arm of her robe.  Blaise Zabini echoed her cry with a howl of pain, and Lavender and Parvati, though barely sprinkled, began whimpering.  Neville, miraculously, was untouched.

            Snape stood, face white with rage and a vein in his temple throbbing.  Caustic steam was rising off his black robes.

            "Thirty points from Gryffindor!  I said add _one drop_ of sundew gel, not the _entire_ _bottle_.  Congratulations, Longbottom, you've managed to produce an astonishing facsimile of _pure lye_.  OUT!  Get out of my classroom!  Don't come back!  Everyone within a ten-foot radius of Mr. Longbottom, report to the infirmary."

            The class fled.

^_~

            "Severus," Minerva McGonagall demanded, her voice harsh and angry, "What's this about you throwing Neville Longbottom out of your potions class?  What have you done to the poor child now?"

            "That talent-less little brat has damaged my classroom for the last time, Minerva.  He's a danger to himself and everyone around him, totally spineless and unable to concoct even the most elementary first-year potion unless Hermione Granger is hissing directions in his ear."  Snape's voice was vindictive, and his face set in a contemptuous sneer.  "He's not coming back down to my dungeon again, except to serve out his week of detention."

            It was so completely and blatantly unfair that Minerva could maintain civility no longer.  "If ability was required to let a student remain in a class, I would have thrown you out of transfiguration in your fourth year.  You can't kick him out of potions; it's a required course.  And if you fail him, I'll take it directly to Dumbledore.  I've had enough of your outrageous partisan favoritism, Snape!  Or is it just coincidence that none of the Slytherins ever fail potions, when Crabbe and Goyle could only scrape up a C through divine intervention?  For God's sake, Neville is absolutely terrified of you.  Of course he can't learn in that environment, not when you start each class automatically assuming he will fail."

            "_He's_ terrified of _me_?"  The exclamation fairly dripped with sarcasm.  "The child is a positive menace!  I could have been _blinded_, Minerva!  I had to send five students to the infirmary with second-degree burns as it is."

            There was an odd, strained tone in his voice.  For the first time, she noticed the pink patches of healing skin on his face, remnants of second and third degree burns.  One of them was a quarter-inch away from his eye.

"Oh my god, Severus, have you been to Madam Pomfrey about those?"

"No.  I've had ample experience patching myself up."

Minerva felt an instant and unwelcome surge of guilt.  Severus had to be under a fair amount of emotional strain; he'd always been pale and thin, but lately he'd been looking even more consumptive than usual, and his temper had gotten even shorter.  Under the circumstances, his explosion at Neville was perfectly understandable—No!  No damnit, it was not!  It was cruel and biased and…  And considering that he had been drenched in caustic slime and really had been a quarter-inch away from being blinded…  

"He actually frightened you, didn't he?" she blurted out in surprise.  "That's why you over reacted."

            "I did _not_ over react," he snapped.  "And I am not letting that child back into my class.  I have no desire to spend the rest of my life looking like a younger, slightly less paranoid version of Mad-Eye Moody!"

            "You _have_ to let him back in, Severus," Minerva said, softening her voice to a more persuasive tone.  "As I said, Potions is a required course.  Dumbledore won't let you kick him out.  And you can't expel him either, only a student's Head of House can do that, and I won't."

            He didn't respond, merely glared at her in sullen silence.

            "Neville's not really such a bad student," she continued.  "Sometimes you just need to spend a little more time explaining things to him."

            "The prospect of getting extra attention from me would probably make Longbottom faint from fear, and I doubt either one of us would survive the experience.  At least, not intact."

            "Your main objection to him seems to be his lack of skill at potions, and nothing is going to remedy that but attention and work.  Perhaps you could assign another student to tutor him."

            "Among those few students who are good enough to qualify as a tutor, there are none whom I would wish to inflict Longbottom on."  He sneered faintly.  "Draco Malfoy is at the top of the class, but if I assign Longbottom to him and the child causes some sort of disaster—which he inevitably will—and injures him, then Lucius Malfoy will either hire someone to assassinate me or file a lawsuit."

            Minerva's lips twitched in spite of herself.  Never in a million years would she admit that Snape's impossibly snide commentary was, occasionally, amusing—but the mental image of Lucius Malfoy trying to decide who to owl first, the lawyer or the hit man, was so perfectly on target that she couldn't quite conceal her response.  Still, the continued disparaging of Neville was needlessly cruel.

            "How do you know that Neville will 'cause some sort of disaster?'  Perhaps he might perform better when not in a state of constant terror.  The only thing more distracting for a student than being afraid of your teacher is fancying them."  Snape's eyes narrowed at her abrupt segue, but she pressed on.  "Students can do the most endearing things then.  Drop their wands when you speak to them.  Forget the answers to questions.  Accidentally transfigure an orange into a set of woman's lingerie…"  Minerva let a small, triumphant smile linger around her lips.  She was not above a spot of blackmail for a good cause.  Pale people blushed so easily, she mused inwardly.  Though maybe it was a flush of anger—Snape usually looked angry anyway, so it was difficult to tell the difference.

            "Tell Longbottom he is to report to the Potions classroom at two o' clock Saturday afternoon for a tutoring session with Miss Granger—in addition to his detention, which still stands.  Miss Granger can consider it an extra credit project; she's been badgering me about assigning one all semester."

            Minerva's smile broadened, though she was careful to keep it from turning into a smirk.  One mustn't appear too proud in victory; Severus was a terrible loser.

            "You see, Severus.  It's much easier to work these things out if one discusses them in a reasonable fashion."

            Snape glared at her viciously from behind his curtain of greasy hair, seething at both the reminder of past humiliations and at being forced to back down.  She smiled calmly back, pleased to have wrung the concession from him, avoiding what would have been a no doubt unpleasant scene in front of Dumbledore.  He was tall enough that she actually had to look up at him, though not very far up—a rare experience for a woman of her height.  With anyone else it would have made her feel feminine.  With Snape, she ruthlessly squashed all such sensations and merely concentrated on not feeling loomed over.  Her younger sister Vesta, for some reason known only to God and female Slytherins, had always thought of him as rather cute.  She had actually dated the man briefly during her seventh year and his fourth, mainly as a means of annoying Lucius Malfoy.  Minerva rarely got on well with Vesta.

            Snape chose not to respond to her cheerful statement, turning and sweeping toward the door, cape billowing dramatically.  He had practiced that in the mirror, she would bet a galleon.

            He paused a moment at the door to toss off one last comment.  Typical of Snape, always wanting to have the last word.

            "I'll leave the directions on the board and the two of them can start without me.  I don't have time to baby-sit them every minute.  And the next cauldron Longbottom melts, he pays for.  I don't care what that grandmother of his says."

            And with that, he swept out into the hallway and was gone.

^_~

Many apologies for the lack of Padfoot and Moony in this chapter.  Don't worry; the canine couple (and I use the term in a totally best friend/het/not slash way) will be back in chapter six.

Thank you to Draqonelle, my Calliope (muse of epic poetry and literature), who, if she does not cease corrupting me with her slashily delightful RL/SB, may become my Erato (muse of erotic poetry and pantomime) instead.

Also, love and kisses to Sarah-Dunleavy, who reads and reviews my HP stuff even though she "doesn't do" fanfic.

Next up, Chapter Five:  _In Which Snape and Draco Take an Unorthodox Fieldtrip_.

Come experience blood, sadism, and gratuitous insulting of Harry.  Also, Draco Malfoy gets a tattoo (but sorry, Malfoy fans—no leather).


	5. In Which Snape and Draco Take an Unortho...

Disclaimer: Characters and situations all belong to JK Rowlings, not me.  Caius the raven belongs to Dragonelle, who has kindly allowed me to borrow him (Vesta McGonagall is hers too).  She also owns the Remus-in-the-closet incident, Caligula Snape, and young Sirius's boggart.  In addition, I got the name Polaris Black for Sirius's sister from someone else's fanfic, but I can't remember whose (her character, however, belongs entirely to me and Dragonelle).

Posted by:  Elspeth (also known as L Squared)

Ships:  Professor Sinistra and an adorable black dog, hopefully hints at a future Snape/McGonagall

Partial credit for the Death Eater induction scene goes to the Anglican _Book Of Common Prayer_, from which I borrowed much of the structure of the ritual (and thank you to Iniga, who very ritualistic Death Eater induction in "Cyanide" gave me the idea—go read "Cyanide", it's good.)

Chapter Five:  _In Which Snape and Draco Take an Unorthodox Fieldtrip_.

            As the days passed and the first semester drew to a close, Snape's mood grew worse and worse.  The treachery of the dementors and the escape of the incarcerated Death eaters from Azkaban should have signified the start of something big, some drastic move on Voldemort's part, but it was followed by first one and then another month of stalemate.  As he returned from meeting after clandestine meeting with nothing of import to report to Dumbledore, Snape's frustration grew.  The fact that the ministry appeared to be doing even less than the Dark Lord only made matters worse.  Fudge continued to hem and haw, finally admitting, after his attempts to cover up the debacle at Azkaban failed, that "a small cell" of "former supporters of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" had "resumed their old activities," but he still refused to acknowledge that Voldemort had returned.  One member of the wizarding parliament, overcome with exasperation, had delivered a particularly nasty speech comparing him to Neville Chamberlain, but Fudge remained unmoved.

            November slipped into December. Snape turned thirty-five.  No one noticed.  The one bright spot of the fall was Slytherin's quidditch victory over Gryffindor, the first in four years.  Nevermind that half of Gryffindor's players had been off form because of a particularly virulent attack of flu, or that they had only won by ten points, or that Harry Potter had still caught the snitch—they had won.  Snape had controlled the undignified desire to dance in circles around Minerva McGonagall, chanting gleefully, and had settled for smirking complacently whenever he saw her instead.  It served her right for manipulating him into setting up the extra lessons for Longbottom.  True, the child had become slightly less destructive over the past several weeks, but the extra time spent supervising the lessons—well, about fifty percent of them; the rest of the time he simply left Caius in a corner of the classroom to glower at the two Gryffindors and report back to him if anything went wrong—was a drain on his time and energy that he could ill afford.  Teaching, creating potions for Voldemort, creating potions for Dumbledore and the ministry, and creating the Wolfsbane potion for Lupin, not to mention being "called away on unexpected errands" several times a month, was beginning to add up.  By the time the Christmas holidays arrived, he had begun looking forward to them desperately.

            This year, however, he was not treated to the usual pleasant lack of students.  Most of the students' parents had chosen to leave their children at Hogwarts over the holidays, where, under the protection of the one wizard Voldemort truly feared, they would likely be safer than they would at home.  Even most of his Slytherins remained behind, some out of a desire to keep up a façade of respectability, some out of real fear.

            Even at Hogwarts, however, the troubles afflicting the wizarding world made themselves felt.  One morning at breakfast, a few days after Christmas, a pair of owls came swooping into the Great Hall.  Lucius Malfoy's giant eagle owl, Creon, who deposited sealed scrolls in front of both Snape and Draco before flying away, and an unprepossessing gray ministry owl, who swooped toward the Hufflepuff table bearing an impressive looking roll of parchment with a heavy black wax seal.

            "Oh no," Claire Sinistra said softly from her position at Snape's left.  "I was afraid something like this was going to happen eventually."  The third-year Hufflepuff girl who had received the scroll burst into tears, jumping to her feet and running from the room.  "I remember back when we were in school: I used to dread mail delivery, waiting to find out which of my friends' families had died, though I suppose I got off rather easily, being a Ravenclaw."  Ravenclaw, with most of its former graduates tucked away in research or intelligence work, had suffered the fewest casualties in the last war against Voldemort.  Hufflepuff, though, had always been the hardest hit.  The majority of aurors were former Hufflepuffs, a point of origin immortalized both in the profession's name, taken from the Latin word for gold, and by the traditional black and yellow auror's robes.  Next to Hufflepuff in casualties had been Slytherin, but few bothered to sympathize with the bereft children of deceased dark wizards, never mind that their parents were just as dead as a Gryffindor's or Hufflepuff's auror relatives.

            "At least they're getting the notifications out in a timely manner this time around," said Professor Vector.  The elderly Ravenclaw shook her head.  "They didn't always bother to do that last time.  I remember one poor Slytherin sixth-year who didn't get his letter until photographs of his father's body had already been splashed across the entire front page of the _Daily Prophet_."  She sniffed disapprovingly.

            "Oh, I think I heard about that," Sinistra said.  "How horribly traumatizing."

            "Yes," Minerva McGonagall said flatly.  "He locked himself in an empty classroom and drank poison.  Thank God his familiar was able to break the window and fly for help, or we would have lost a student."

            Remus Lupin was staring at McGonagall with an expression of absolute horror.

            "My God," he said softly.  "I never knew about that."

            Snape decided that it was time to change the subject.

            "The _Daily Prophet_ is nothing but a sensationalized tabloid anyway," he sneered.  "It's almost as bad as that insipid _Witch Weekly_, and the whole thing's written on an eleven-year old's reading level.  I canceled my subscription years ago."

            "It's gotten better lately ever since that insufferable Skeeter woman stopped writing," Minerva said, accepting the subject change gracefully.  "Aren't you going to open your letter, Severus?"

            Snape cracked the ostentatiously ornate seal and unfolded the creamy parchment.  Handmade, of course.  Lucius never could resist a chance to show off the fact that he was richer than anyone had a right to be.

Dear Severus,

            As you know, my son's sixteenth birthday approaches.  As his Head of House, your permission is required to permit him to leave Hogwarts grounds on the evening of January 6th, so that he may celebrate the occasion with his family.  A small coming of age ceremony has been planned for him, which you of course are invited to attend.  As you know, Narcissa and I have always considered you to be, in a sense, Draco's godfather, and we would like to extend you the honor of sponsoring him at this momentous event, as I once did for you.

Cordially,

Lucius Mephistopheles Malfoy

            Snape felt a cold chill run up his spine.  For "small coming of age ceremony," read "Death Eater induction."  Draco was unusually young for the roll, but Lucius had always had high expectations of his son.  It was too early, too soon.  Another few years and he might have been able to draw the child out from under the influence of his father.  As it was, Draco worshiped the ground Lucius Malfoy walked on and was desperate for his approval, a dangerous combination.  He would walk willingly into the arms of Voldemort at his father's orders, not out of resentment at the abuse Slytherins received at the hands of the favored Gryffindors, or from a desire for vengeance against the aurors and ministry officials who had blindly ruined the lives of so many Slytherin children, but simply from a desire to make Lucius proud of him.

            Snape had always had a soft spot for Draco.  Perhaps it was sympathy over his overbearing father and constant existence in the shadow of the great and wonderful Harry Potter, perhaps he saw in the bitter and arrogant young Slytherin a reflection of himself, or perhaps it was simply that Draco was one of the only students in Hogwarts who actually seemed to enjoy and have a talent for potions.  Admittedly, some of his apparent respect was feigned as part of Lucius' scheme to keep an eye on Snape, and some of it was simply blatant sucking up, but there was real talent and pleasure in learning there as well.  And unlike Hermione Granger, whose hard work in his class was motivated mainly by a desire to get good marks and a generalized interest in gaining knowledge—which she would then show off at every opportunity—Draco honestly liked making potions.  Despite Minerva's accusations, his place at the head of the fifth-year potions class was not due entirely to favoritism.

            And now Snape would have to take his favorite student and hand him over to the darkness.  Would _have_ to, or his cover would be blown and Dumbledore's only link to the plans and movements of the Death Eaters would be lost.  Lucius' letter might be couched in the form of a polite invitation, but it was an order as ironclad as any monarch's decree, and refusal to comply would mean exposure and death—if he was lucky.

            Snape turned to stare at the Slytherin table, where Draco was tucking away his own letter in a pocket of his robe, obviously intending to make it "disappear" later on.  One of the first things any Slytherin learns: destroy the evidence.  One person's secret is another person's opportunity.  Draco, noticing Snape's eyes on him, looked up towards the teachers' table, meeting his gaze.  And smiled.

^_~

            A week later, on the evening of January 6th, Snape sat in his office, waiting for Draco to arrive, waiting for the flare of burning pain in his arm that would signify the beginning of the night's "festivities" and tell and him Draco when it was time to leave the safety of Hogwarts for the Forbidden Forest and whatever apparition point they were being summoned to.

            Caius was perched on the back of his chair, preening his beak through Snape's hair in an exceedingly irritating fashion.  He knew something was going to happen tonight, and he didn't approve.

            "Caius, stop that," he snapped, pulling his head away from the raven's reach.  Offended, the bird gave a fluttering hop onto his desk, ruffling his feathers and pinning him sternly with an anthracite glare.  He straightened up and turned his head sharply toward the office door as it began creaking slowly open, revealing the slim, silver-haired silhouette of Draco, pale and excited in black dress robes.

            "Draco," Caius croaked in greeting.  The Slytherin student was one of the few people he displayed any degree of affection towards, the others being Snape, Dumbledore, and oddly enough, Ginny Weasely.  "Draco.  Raat?"  He flew across the room to Draco, perching precariously on the shoulder of his robes.  "Rat.  Raat?"

            "Hello, Caius."

            "Don't give him anything," Snape said.  "He's already eaten.  And don't let him perch there either.  Ravens only do that to put themselves in a better position for pecking out people's eyes."

            Draco laughed, forcing Caius off his shoulder and onto his wrist, then transferring him back to the desk.  " I think I shall ask Father to buy me a raven when I graduate.  They make much better familiars than common Snowy Owls."

            "Common familiars for common wizards."

            Suddenly, a hot flash of pain shot through Snape's left arm, as if someone had pressed a branding iron into the skin.  He flinched involuntarily, clenching his hands into fists.

            "What is it?" Draco demanded.

            "It is time for us to go."  Snape pushed back his sleeve, showing the ugly black Dark Mark on his forearm.  Let the child see it now; he would have one of his own by the end of the night.  "It is fortunate that you chose to come down when you did, Mr. Malfoy.  You were very nearly late."

            Caius, seeing Snape's exposed arm, let out a sharp and angry hiss.  "Snake," he cawed harshly.  "Snake.  Ten points from Sly-ther-in."

            Ignoring Caius, Snape got to his feet and moved out from behind the desk, gesturing for Draco to precede him into the hallway.  Caius, left alone in the classroom, made a soft, mournful croaking sound.  "Sev-a-rus," he said sadly.  "Snake."

            "Be quiet, Caius," Snape ordered, as the door closed behind him and Draco, concealing the raven from view.

            "We will be apparating directly to the gathering as soon as we reach the Forbidden Forest."  Snape informed Draco as the two of them ghosted silently through the empty halls.  "Once we get there, you are to stay silent and hang back until I present you.  Don't speak unless spoken to, and don't address the Dark Lord directly until he gives you permission to do so.  Don't meet his eyes.  After you swear fealty to him, he will burn the Mark into you.  It is… extremely painful.  Try not to scream or cry if you can possibly help it.  Weakness is not tolerated."

            As they slipped out of the castle and started across the grounds toward the forest, and Snape continued with his instructions, Draco's eyes got rounder and rounder.  Snape couldn't help feeling a small twinge of guilt deep inside his soul.  What a thing to be doing to a child who trusted him.  He covered the emotion with a sneer.

            "If you are quite ready, Mr. Malfoy?" 

            Draco gave a half-frightened, half-eager nod, and Snape pulled back his sleeve once more, pressed the tip of his wand to the Mark, ignoring the resultant stab of pain, and apparated the two of them away.

^_~

            Draco felt his stomach give a slow roll as the dark trees of the Forbidden Forest disappeared, to be replaced by stretch of even darker mooreland, flat and lonely and empty but for the group of eight black-robed figures who stood in a silent circle around him and Professor Snape.  Eight figures, and a ninth at the head of the circle, tall and looming, flanked by a small, round little man who hung back nervously, wringing his hands.  In the dim, greenish wandlight, one of the appendages gleamed silver.

            "Sso," the tall figure spoke, his voice a queer, high-pitched hiss.  "My _faithful_ alchemist."  Why that odd emphasis on the word faithful?  "You have brought uss a new recruit."

            "Yes, Master."

            "You may approach me."  Voldemort waved one abnormally elongated hand regally.

            Professor Snape took several steps forward, then fell to his knees in front of the Dark Lord, head bowed forward, abasing himself totally. Gone was the arrogance, the air of command.  He suddenly looked gaunt and much younger.  "Thank you, Master."

            "Do you have the poisons I asked you for?"

            A small collection of bottles and vials was presented.  The little round man stepped forward and gathered them up, then retreated backward again into the shadows.

            "Aahh, excellent," Voldemort tapped his fingers together in a pleased manner.  "I do sso enjoy your little concoctions.  Sso… creative.  You have done well."  One hand rested for a moment on top of the greasy hair.  "There will be no punishment this time.  And now, let uss see what you have brought uss."

            And with that, the Dark Lord swung his attention toward Draco.

            Glow red eyes, slit-pupiled like a snakes, seemed to penetrate into his very soul.  _Keep your eyes down, don't flinch, don't stare_.  Draco gazed at the slitted nostrils, the narrow, lipless mouth, the greenish skin—were those _scales_—transfixed with a blend of horror and amazement.  Those firy eyes held him spellbound.  Potter had dueled with this?  Against his will, his assessment of the spoiled and arrogant Gryffindor rose a notch.

            "Ssso, what have we here?"

            "Lucius Malfoy's son, my lord.  He is sixteen tonight."

            "Aahh, yesss."  The snake-like face shifted into a smile.  "That hair, those eyes… I recognize the veela blood.  Let uss hope he shall be a credit to your name, Luciuss.  I trust you have trained him well?"

            "Yes, great lord," one of the figures spoke, stepping forward and lowering his hood.  Lucius Malfoy's pale eyes swept over his son, inspecting, cataloguing, sizing up every detail of his appearance and bearing.  The lips curved upward slightly; he had been found satisfactory.  "I have raised Draco to serve you, to honor and follow only you."

            This was not strictly true, though it was close enough.  Lucius Malfoy, the consummate politician, had taught Draco curses and hexes, taught him the glorious history of wizard-kind and the danger muggles and mudbloods posed to their ancient and honorable society, but he'd also taught him how to manage and maintain the Malfoy fortune and estates, and told him to be loyal to the family name above all else.  "Rulers come and go," he always said, "but Malfoys are forever."  Most fifteen year-olds got a new racing broom for their birthdays, Draco had gotten his own stock portfolio, with shares in various magical corporations  (plus one muggle company called Microsoft who paid extremely large dividends and whose business practices Lucius thoroughly approved of) and an annotated copy of _Ars Maledictio_, the ancient Dark Arts manual.  This year, for Draco's sixteenth birthday, he was giving him something even better—power.

            "Iss that sso, Draco?  Do you wish to serve me?"

            "Y-yes, Great Lord," Draco stammered.  Of course he wanted to serve Voldemort.  The Dark Lord was the winning side, the powerful side, not those muggle-loving fools at the ministry, who, if their performance so far was anything to go by, were going to go down with barely a fight.

            "Why?"

            "Be-because.  Because you are right, because purebloods are superior to muggles and mudbloods.  Because I'm tired of always being second-best to those stupid, spoiled Gryffindors.  Because I hate Harry Potter and his snotty little muggle-loving friends.  Because you are going to win, and whichever side wins, I want to be on it."

            "Sspoken like a true Malfoy.  Luciuss, Sseveruss, come forward."

            Professor Snape and his father stepped up to flank Draco on either side.

            "The candidate for initiation will now be presented."

            "We present Draco Malfoy to receive entry into the service of the Dark Lord," Snape and Lucius spoke in unison, one voice hard and cold, but with an undercurrent of pride, the other low and soft.

            "Will you be responsible for seeing that the one you present is trained in our methods and the pureblood cause?"

            "We will."

            "Will you by your actions and witness help this candidate to grow into his full stature as a servant of my cause, and stand surety for his actions if he fails?"

            "We will."

            "Draco Malfoy, do you renounce Albus Dumbledore and the Ministry of magic and all the forces that rebel against us?"

            That was easy; he had never felt the slightest bit of loyalty to either Dumbledore or the Ministry in the first place.  "I renounce them."

            "Do you renounce the evil influence of the muggle world, which corrupts and destroys the purity of wizarding blood?"

            "I renounce it."  Again easy, though he did feel a small pang of guilt at the thought of his Microsoft stock and the bank account in Zurich—but if Lucius thought those were okay for a Malfoy, they must not be corrupting or degrading.

            "Do you renounce all the weak desires which draw you from the service of my cause?  Do you renounce pity, mercy, sympathy for those of baser blood or for any causes which conflict with your loyalty to ours?"

            "I renounce them."

            "Do you turn to me and accept Lord Voldemort as your master, and as the savior of the wizarding world?"

            "I do."

            "Do you put your whole trust in my power and righteousness?"

            "I do."

            "Do you promise to follow and obey me as your Lord?"

            "I do."

            "Avery, bring forth the branding iron."

            Branding iron?  Oh God.  _I will not scream, I will not scream.  It will be worth it.  I will not scream._

            As his father took a firm hold on his left arm and Professor Snape gripped his shoulders, a third dark robed figure stepped forward holding a terrifying looking glowing brand, which he handed to Voldemort.  As the Dark Lord stepped forward and pressed the burning metal into the skin of Draco's forearm, he though he heard Snape whispering a nearly silent apology into his right ear, but he was so busy trying not to scream that he couldn't be sure.

            Oh God it hurt it hurt it hurt!  He could feel it burning into his arm.  Burning, burning until he was sure it must sear all the way down to the bone.  Tears sprang into his eyes, and he could fell blood dripping down his chin from where he had bitten straight through his lower lip.  Then the metal was gone, but the pain remained, dimishishing only slightly, pulsing in time to his heartbeat.

            Then Voldemort folded his long, thin fingers around Draco's arm, pressing them into the raw and charred Mark until the pain became so great that, were it not for the tight grips of Lucius and Professor Snape, he would have fallen to his knees.

            "Morsmordre," the Dark Lord said, and Draco could feel the mark on his arm flare in response, see the red and blistered skin darken to black, feel the pull that the word awoke in his body.

            "Draco Malfoy, you are sealed by the Dark Mark and marked as my own forever."

            As the Dark Lord withdrew his hand, Draco, obeying the orders given , it now seemed hours ago, by Professor Snape, knelt (well, more fell than knelt actually) and kissed the hem of Voldemort's robe.  It took Lucius's hand on his arm to haul him back to his feet, where he concentrated all his energy on remaining upright.  He spent the rest of the meeting in a daze, barely noticing the praise and congratulations heaped upon his father by the Lestranges, both of whom had gaunt, ravaged faces and a creepy, mad light in their eyes.  The plans being discussed for an eventual invasion of Hogwarts, with the dementors as reinforcements, floated right over his head, and the final apparition back to the Forbidden Forest and the walk back to the Hogwarts dungeons slid by like a dream. He obediently accepted the painkillers and sleeping potion Snape pressed into his hand before sending walking him back to the Slytherin dorms, and totally ignored the oddly distraught shrieks of Caius ("Draco!  Snake!  Ten points from Sly-ther-in!").  At that moment, only two things mattered: the throbbing, burning pain in his arm and the look of pleased pride he had seen in his father's eyes.

^_~

*AN:  eeeeew!  I feel dirty!  My profoundest apologies to the Episcopal Church for what I've done with the Baptismal Sacraments, but Tom Riddle probably came from a largely Anglican background, and perversion of ritual seems like the kind of thing Voldemort would do.  **Shudder**.  Voldemort is hard to write, and that bit with the hand on top of Snape's head—Ick ick ick!  Poor Severus.  I'm going to go take a shower now.

Thank you, thank you to everybody who reviewed me. 

Demeter: If you want to see my SB/RL slash stuff, read "Li'l Red Riding Hood," not much action, but same Moony and Padfoot.

Leigh, ZZ, Jellibeana, gjegji, and Alla:  Thank you ^_^,  I  try really hard to be original and to keep everyone in character.  And I hate it when people make Sirius out to be an idiot too.

ICNess & You-Know-Who:  I'm in y'all's favorites?  Yea! J

Kit Cloudkicker (like the name):  About the silver nitrate thing, think werewolves, silver…  It's kind of like spiking a vampire's drink with garlic (but Sirius was only kidding; he'd never actually do it).

Karine:  Yup, Sirius is still scared of dementors (and I'm not done torturing him with them yet, either).

Next up, Chapter Six:  _In Which Sinistra Discovers Lupin's Dark Secret and McGonagall Hits Snape._

Moony and Padfoot return!  Lavender and Parvati spread rumors!  And is Claire Sinistra really sleeping with a Death Eater? (Minerva thinks she knows who).


	6. In Which Sinistra Discovers Lupin’s Dark...

Disclaimer: Characters and situations all belong to JK Rowlings, not me.  Caius the raven belongs to Draqonelle, who has kindly allowed me to borrow him (Vesta McGonagall is hers too).  She also owns the Remus-in-the-closet incident, Caligula Snape, and young Sirius's boggart.  In addition, I got the name Polaris Black for Sirius's sister from someone else's fanfic, but I can't remember whose (her character, however, belongs entirely to me and Draqonelle).

Posted by:  Elspeth (also known as L Squared)

Ships:  Professor Sinistra and an adorable black dog, hopefully hints at a future Snape/McGonagall

This is officially the longest chapter yet.  Hurrah for having a computer in one's dorm room—who needs sleep?

Chapter Six:  _In Which Sinistra Discovers Lupin's Dark Secret and McGonagall Hits Snape._

Claire Sinistra paused in front of the door to Remus Lupin's quarters.  She knew he was an intensely private person, almost as reclusive as Severus, and would probably not appreciate her coming to his rooms like this, especially not so late in the evening, but she truly did need to speak to him, and he hadn't been in the teachers' lounge or his office.

She knocked lightly on the door, and when she received no answer, pushed it open and peeked inside, knowing that it was rude, but unable to stop herself from checking, just in case.

She felt her lips curving into a smile as she spied the two forms lying in a heap before the fireplace, dimly illuminated by the still glowing coals.  Then she noticed that the sleeping canine was much lighter in color than Snuffles was, and that the man with one arm wrapped securely around a furry neck had much darker, longer hair than Remus.  With a pang of cold horror in her stomach, she remembered the lunar tables she had chalked on the board for the fifth years only that morning.  And let out a shrill, involuntary scream.

The wolf let out a yelp and jerked to its feet in an instant, ears up and fur bristling.  Claire stood in the doorway, frozen in terror.  Oh god, he was going to eat her.  How could she have forgotten the full moon?  How could she have been so stupid?  Maybe he wouldn't attack her if she stayed still.

As the echoes of Claire's scream died away, the man began to stir as well, pushing tangled black hair out of his face and blinking confusedly at the petrified Claire.

"Moony?  Wa's goin' on?"

Claire took a closer look at him, sprawled on the floor with the werewolf crouching protectively in front of him, and screamed again.

"Sirius Black!!"

Instantly, her wand was out and pointed in his direction (why, oh why hadn't she brought it out even earlier, when she had first seen the wolf, instead of shrieking like an idiot and waking them both up?).

"Don't move," she ordered, trying to make her voice sound low and threatening instead of merely terrified.  "I _will_ hex you.  Remus, get out of the way."

"Claire!" Black yelped, attempting to rise to his feet but freezing in place when she fired off a stream of sparks that barely missed him.  Her hand was shaking so badly it was a wonder she didn't set the carpet on fire.  The wolf whined miserably, and placed itself even more firmly within the line of fire.

"I said, don't move.  I don't care how Remus got you into the castle or what you're doing here, I'm not going to let you get away with it.  Remus, I said get out of the way!"  What was Remus doing?  How much of the situation was he, in his transformed state, capable of understanding?  Did he know who she was, understand what she was saying, or did he merely see her as a threat to Black?  And why the hell was he protecting the murdering traitor in the first place?  What the _bloody hell_ was he doing letting an escaped dark wizard into Hogwarts, into his very room?  _Sleeping_ with him?

"Claire, no, you don't understand."  Black was now fully awake, eyes wide and face pale with fear and horror at being caught.  "I'm innocent, I've been hiding.  Dumbledore knows I'm here, he'll tell you."  He was speaking very fast, almost stumbling over his words in his haste to convince her.  He always had been a bad liar.  Good at trickery and conniving, yes, but he'd gone completely flatfooted when caught out face-to-face.

"Liar!  If the Headmaster knew you were here he'd turn you over to the aurors in a second, you miserable traitor."

The wolf began to growl.

"No, I swear, he knows I didn't do it.  You've got to believe me!  I've been here all term and I haven't hurt anybody.  Look, I'll show you!"  To the wolf:  "It's okay Moony, calm down, I'm going to show her."

And then suddenly Black was gone, and Snuffles stood crouched in his place.

Claire felt herself go pale with horror.  All term!  He had been here all term!  Voldemorte's spy, lying in wait to betray Dumbledore and the light side again, as he had done fourteen years ago.  And all term Remus Lupin had been covering for him.  "This is Snuffles, I got him out of the pound…"  "Claire, meet my dog Snuffles, I picked him up over the summer..."  Oh god, and she had petted him.  She had played with him and fussed over him.  She had rubbed that filthy murderer's miserable traitorous ears!!!

A moment later, Snuffles had been replaced again by Black, who was gazing at her with the same soulful, supplicant eyes as the dog.  How could she have ever thought him charming and good-looking, thought his illegal animagus form lovable and cute?

"You slimy, evil, lying traitor!"  In her hot, betrayed anger, Claire didn't know if she meant Remus, Black, or both.  "I trusted you, and you've been lying in wait the whole time to betray us to You-Know-Who, worming your way into our affections, letting us think you were one of us when you were really a servant of the Dark Lord!"  Was she speaking to Remus now, or to the Black of fourteen years ago?  It didn't matter—the accusation would serve for both.  "I touched you! I can't believe I actually touched you!   I let you put your head in my lap!"  She felt violated just remembering it.

She was backing out into the hallway now, the wand in her hand forgotten.  Desperate to put some space between her and Black, between her and the werewolf, now revealed to be just as dark and untrustworthy as all its kind.  _Severus was right_.

 "I can't believe I let you lick me!!"

^_~

            Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil had been slipping silently (or at least, as silent as they were capable of being) past the end of the hall leading to the teachers' quarters, on their way back from a stealthy late-night run to the kitchens, when a loud, angry voice stopped them in their tracks.

            "You slimy, evil lying traitor!" shouted a woman who sounded a lot like Professor Sinistra.  The two girls froze, crouching down behind a convenient suit of armor. 

            "Oh no," Parvati breathed.  "We're caught.  She'll see us for sure."

            But Sinistra appeared far too preoccupied to so much as notice the two Gryffindors in their metallic hiding place.  Her voice rose louder, shouting accusations that made the two girls' spines creep.

            "…betray us to You-Know-Who… a servant of the Dark Lord!"

            Lavender had gone white.  "A Death Eater, Parvati.  She's talking to a Death Eater.  Oh God, oh Merlin, there's a Death Eater in the castle!"

            But it got worse.  Sinistra began shouting other things, terrible things, things that made Parvati blush just to hear them.  "I can't believe I let you lick me!" Sinistra screeched, backing out of Lupin's room into the hallway.  There, framed in Lupin's doorway, was the tall, thin shape of a man.  The Death Eater!

            Lavender and Parvati fled, taking with them only the fleeting image of a gaunt silhouette and long back hair.

            They ran frantically through the halls, skidding to a halt in front of the Fat Lady to gasp out the password—"OWLs," chosen by Hermione—before bursting into the Gryffindor common room.

             "Professor Sinistra has been having an affair with a strange, scary looking man!" Lavender announced frantically.  "We saw them!  And he's a traitor and he's serving You-Know-Who!"

             Harry, in the middle of a game of wizards' chess with Ron, froze, the rook in his hand held motionless in the air over the board.  A horrible scenario had leaped into his mind.

            "Oh no!  It's Sirius!"

            "Yes, we know," Lavender cried. "She was letting him lick her!"

            "What if she's pregnant!"

            "Who was he?"

            "We didn't see him that well," Parvati admitted.  "But he was really scary, all tall and thin with long black hair; he looked just like a Death Eater!"

Two terrified first years in the corner by the door jumped to their feet and dashed out into the corridor, in search of Professor McGonagall.  Five frantic minutes later, they finally ran her down outside of the teachers' office.

"Professor, professor, Lavender and Parvati saw Professor Sinistra in the hallway and she's been having an affair with some scary dark-haired death eater man and Parvati thinks she's pregnant!" 

            "Jennifer, what on earth are you talking about?" McGonagall demanded rather impatiently.  "Slow down, I can hardly understand you."

            "Lavender and Parvati came into the common room and told everyone that Professor Sinistra was in the hall on the second floor fighting with a man," Jennifer babbled nervously.

            "Yes, Lavender said she was having an affair with him!" the other first year chimed in.  "She was calling him a traitor and a supporter of You-Know-Who."

            "Yes, and we don't know who it was but Parvati saw him and he had dark hair.  And she said Professor Sinistra had been letting him do all sorts of really gross things to her, and that she might be pregnant.  And that means she must be in love with him, and Lavender said he was a Death Eater, and she must have been letting him into the school, and that means there must be a Death Eater inside here right now and Professor Sinistra knows him, and we're scared to go to Astronomy tomorrow."

            Through this narrative, McGonagall's expression had been gradually shifting from complete puzzlement to comprehension and growing outrage.  _Death Eater, hmm?_  _And seeing Sinistra?_    Her mind began jumping to heated conclusions, temporarily forgetting that Lavender and Parvati were not precisely Hogwarts' most reliable source of information, especially at second hand.  Claire Sinistra would never let an outsider into Hogwarts, but then again, perhaps she wouldn't have too.  Perhaps there were other, more likely candidates for her mysterious "dark-haired" lover much closer at hand…

At that moment, Snape appeared in the doorway of the teachers' lounge, obviously curious as to what all of the fuss was about.

McGonagall's face went white with rage when she saw him. 

 "Severus!" she bellowed, hitting him openhanded across the face.  "How could you!?!"

            Snape stood frozen in shock, one hand touching the livid red mark on the side of his face.  "Minerva, are you _insane_?"

            "I might ask _you_ the same thing.  Claire Sinistra indeed.  And fighting in the middle of the hallway.  Do you want to expose everything?  You two," she turned back momentarily to the Gryffindor first-years, "go back to the common room.  You," she grabbed a still stunned Snape firmly by one bony wrist "are coming straight to the Headmaster with me."

            As Minerva hauled a now vehemently protesting Snape—"Let go of me, you infernal woman!"—off in the direction of Dumbledore's office, the now thoroughly horrified first years slunk back to the Gryffindor common room, accompanied by Lee Jordan, who had been hovering about the end of the hallway acting as a lookout for the Weasley twins—busy "decorating" Snape's classroom while he was out of the vicinity—who had been privy to the whole scene, and was now in transports of ecstasy.

            "She hit him," he kept repeating.  "She actually hit him.  How cool is that?  I think I love her.  Hey, everybody," he announced dramatically as the three of them reentered the common room.  "Professor McGonagall just bitch-slapped Snape!!"

            And the rumors grew even further. 

^_~

            "Jelly Slugs," Minerva McGonagall snapped at the stone gargoyle that marked the entrance to Dumbledore's office   Snape had by this point given up struggling, but resembled a volcano moments away from erupting. 

             "Headmaster, you won't believe what I've heard…"

            "I don't know what she's maundering on about…"

            "Right in front of the students…"

            " I think she's been spending too much time as an animagus; it's starting to interfere with her mental processes…"

            The two of them spoke overtop of one another, trailing off into an awkward halt when they realized that the small, cluttered office was already filled with people.  Grouped around Dumbledore's desk were Claire Sinistra, a large grey wolf, and a barefoot, dark-haired man who seemed to be clad only a pair of somewhat shabby looking muggle sweatpants.

            "YOU!" Snape shouted, spearing him with an accusatory finger.  "I might have known you'd be mixed up in this somehow.  Every time something happens to me, it's connected to either _you_ or Potter!"

            "Minerva, Severus?"  Dumbledore inquired mildly, ignoring Snape's outburst, "is there a problem?"

            "Albus," Minerva said, in a slow, overly controlled voice, her previous indignation forgotten.  "That's Sirius Black."

            "Yes," Claire said, in a very tired-sounding voice.  "He knows.  We were just discussing that."

            "I'm afraid it's a very long and complicated story."  Dumbledore smiled ruefully.  "Much too long to explain the entire thing right now, so I will stick to the essentials.  Sirius, as I have already told Claire, is innocent.  The Potters apparently decided to use Peter Pettigrew as their Secret Keeper instead."

            "But that would mean…" Minerva's voice trailed off.  If Black had not been the Secret Keeper, then he would not have known the Potters' location, and it would have been impossible for him to betray them to Voldemort.

            "It was Peter who was the traitor," Sirius spat from his position by the fireplace, where the wolf—probably Lupin, she realized—was standing protectively between him and the rest of the room.  "Little Petey, with his 'Oh, I'd be happy to be the secret keeper, Sirius, what a good idea'.  Bastard.  I should have known there was a reason his animagus form turned out to be a rat."

            "Animagus?"

            "Sirius, as well as being innocent, is also, as Claire discovered earlier this evening, an unregistered animagus," Dumbledore continued.  "He, James, and Peter all were, as it turns out."

            Minerva felt a sudden surge of pride.  She knew from first hand experience just how difficult becoming an animagus was; it had taken her years of study to achieve it.  James Potter and Sirius Black had been two of her most talented students, but she had had no idea that their skills had been this great.

            "Even little Peter?  I never would have imagined…"  But then, she would never have imagined him a traitor either.  No wonder Sirius had been driven to kill him.  Still…

            "Sirius, did you have to destroy the entire street when you went after Peter?" Minerva asked.  "All those muggles…"  Claire nodded her agreement, setting the miniature silver models of Saturn in her ears swinging.

            "I didn't," Sirius protested.  "That was Wormtail too.  Sneaky little vermin set off the explosion himself, then turned into a rat and ran away."

            "Then that wild story Harry told at the end of his third year was true after all."  A thought suddenly occurred to her, and she rounded on Snape, her earlier annoyance with him returning.  "And _you_ told the entire school that the child was under a confundus charm!  Severus!"

            "Well, how was I supposed to know Black was telling the truth in the Shrieking Shack?  What should I have expected him to say?  'I did it.  I'm guilty.  Take me away?'"

            "Er, yeah.  He did kind of miss the part where Ron's pet rat turned back into Wormtail."  Sirius offered.  Then he grinned.  "That was after the three thirteen year-olds had knocked him unconscious."  Next to him, Lupin managed what looked remarkably like a lupine version of silent laughter.

            Snape favored the two of them with a venomous glare.  If looks could kill, that one would have had the power of twelve _avada kedavras_.

            "But what are you doing at Hogwarts?"

            "Yes," Claire chimed in.  "_That_ I would very much like to know."

            "Patrolling the grounds to keep the Death Eaters out, of course."  Sirius grinned again, tipping his head slightly to one side in an unmistakably canine manner.

            "You're Snuffles," Minerva guessed.  "I should have known.  Then it was you who was in the infirmary with Harry at the end of last year.  You should have gone ahead and bitten Fudge, the imbecile."

            "Trust me, I wish now I had.  Blithering bloody idiot, with his 'no reason to suspect that You-Know-Who has returned.'  _How_ did he get elected?  Who _voted_ for him?"

            "Now, I'm sure Cornelius would have made a perfectly adequate Minister of Magic during a time of peace," Dumbledore put in, ignoring Sirius's muttered four-letter commentary and Minerva's sniff of disdain.  "But let us return to the matter of you and Severus, Minerva.  I believe there was some problem?"

            Minerva felt her face heat.  "Two of my Gryffindors came to me with a most disturbing story pertaining to Claire, claiming she had had a lovers' quarrel with a tall, dark-haired man whom she accused of being a Death Eater.  I can only assume now that they overheard her talking to Sirius, but at the time, I thought…" she let her voice trail off.

            Snape was regarding her with a look of outrage, Claire with one of mixed amusement and horror.  "You mean you assumed that _Severus_ and I…  That we…  Wait, do you mean to say that _students_ saw me arguing with Sirius?"

            "Well, you were kind of loud."

            "Shut up, _Snuffles_.  From now on, you can get someone else to rub your belly."

            "What a shame," Snape said dryly.  "The two of you seemed to enjoy it so."

            Claire flushed and looked down, giving the skirt of her robes a jerk.  "I thought he was a normal dog.  It never occurred to me that he could be an animagus.  I thought he was just some poor, half-starved mutt that Remus had picked up in an animal shelter somewhere."

            "I am not a mutt."  Sirius looked offended.

            "Well, you certainly look half-starved.  I can see your ribs."  She gestured toward Sirius's bare chest.

            "If you'd let me put on a _shirt_ before dragging Remus and me down here, you wouldn't be able to."

            "Sorry."

            "Oh, don't apologize," Snape said.  "I've lived my life filled with rapt anticipation at the thought of seeing Sirius Black's chest hair."

            Sirius looked as if he was about to snarl something equally sarcastic in return when Minerva, her attention drawn to his bare torso by Claire's comment, interrupted him.

            "Sirius, those look absolutely horrible," she said, looking at the series of scars scattered over his chest and arms.  "What on earth are they from?"

            "D'you want the complete rundown?"  he asked, raising an eyebrow inquiringly.  "Okay, this one," he indicated an old crescent-shaped bite mark on his shoulder, "was Remus—no, don't pull your ears back like that and go all guilty on me, I was asking for it, and lycanthropy's not contagious to someone in animagus form.  These," he waved a hand at the shiny-looking burn marks on his upper arms, "are from a motorcycle accident.  This one's Remus again.  That's from a bludger.  That's a cutting curse from when I was an auror.  The nose is another bludger, plus Arabella Figg's bloody cat, and _that_ one"—here he pointed across the room at Snape's nose—"was James Potter's left cross."

            Snape reached up to knock his hand aside, then grabbed the other man's wrist and turned it over, revealing a thick, ragged gash of scar tissue.

            "I see you left out a few," he sneered.  "Next time, do the rest of us a favor and cut lengthwise."

            "I would have, if I'd had a _knife_."  Sirius snatched his wrist back and wrapped his other hand around it protectively.

            Snape's eyebrows went up.  "If you didn't have a knife, then what the devil did you do _that_ with?"

            Sirius looked as though he were wishing heartily that he had never spoken at all.  "Teeth," he muttered, not meeting anyone's eyes.  "They confiscate sharp objects in Azkaban."

            "Oh my God," Claire breathed, echoing Minerva's thoughts perfectly.  Snape was staring at Sirius in a kind of horrified fascination.  Lupin pushed his nose against Sirius's hand, making a faint whining sound.

            "Stop looking at me like that.  I wouldn't do anything like that _now_; I have Harry to take care of."

            "Good luck," Snape said, breaking the uncomfortable silence.  "If you're trying to keep Potter out of trouble, you'll need it.  Now that we've had this touching little reunion, can we all retire to our respective quarters for the evening?  I have essays to grade."

            Minerva seized on the chance to change the subject.  "We'll need something to tell the students.  Who knows what sort of rumors are floating all over the school by now?"

            "I can imagine some of them."  Snape gave her another unpleasant stare.  "I think you owe me an apology."

            "Severus, I really am sorry about that.  I shouldn't have hit you, especially not in front of the students."

            Dumbledore, who had been looking rather concerned, now appeared to be trying to conceal a smile.

            "Oh my, I can see that we _will_ have some explaining to do.  Don't worry, I'll have come up with a suitable story by breakfast time.  For now, just make sure the students know that there are most certainly no Death Eaters in the castle."

            "I'd better go and see Harry," Sirius said.  "He must be worried frantic by now."  He turned into Snuffles, a swift, smooth transformation—obviously the result of years of practice.  Now that Minerva thought about it, Snuffles did look an awful lot like Sirius, with that shaggy black hair and those great, pale blue eyes.

            As the three teachers and two canines filed out of the room, Snape turned to Lupin and said: "Come down to my office tomorrow, one you've changed back."  Minerva noticed that even while addressing the werewolf, he was careful to keep on the far side of the hallway, with at least one person between them.  "I'll give you all the potions you need."  And with that cryptic comment, he turned and swept away up the corridor, vanishing into the shadows.

^_~

Thank you to all my reviewers:

Leigh, Lovechilde, Milkyweed:  Here you go, the next chapter, with a healthy serving of Snuffles angst.

Anoni:  Glad you liked the Microsoft line too; I couldn't resist putting it in.

 Tiger Lily and Kaylin:  Look out for the next installment; it will have more Draco in it.

Draqonelle:  Don't scold me about the Death Eater ceremony; it was all your talking about Greek tragedy that gave me the idea in the first place.

Rosie Thorliefson:  Thanks, I'm glad you liked the Draco/Lucius relationship—it's going to pop up again later.

Heather Granger and Twinnie:  I have Snape nailed?  Yea!  He, Remus, and Padfoot are three of my favorite characters, and I'm trying to do them justice and keep them from getting too OOC.

Taracollowen:  Is this slash, did you mean?  Nope, sorry (what was the red herring?)

Ozma:  Thank you.  The scene with Snape and McGonagall was incredibly fun to write—one of my favorites.  Caius is fun too—that's why I stole him from Draqonelle.  I wish my pets could be that smart.

Kit Cloudkicker:  Yep, I'd like to strangle him too (except then I'd have to touch him).

Next up, Chapter Seven:  _In Which Several People Have Second Thoughts, and a Woman Talks to a Mirror._

            At long last, we meet Polaris Black, the mystery woman who's in all the disclaimers but has yet to appear in the actual story.


	7. In Which Several People Have Second Thou...

Disclaimer: Characters and situations all belong to JK Rowlings, not me.  Caius the raven belongs to Draqonelle, who has kindly allowed me to borrow him (Vesta McGonagall and Caligula Snape are hers too).  In addition, I got the name Polaris Black for Sirius's sister from someone else's fanfic, but I can't remember whose (her character, however, belongs entirely to me and Draqonelle—and owes a bit to Victor Hugo's Inspector Javert).  The Black Bitch is mine from her three-cylinder 750cc engine to the blue detail work on her gas tank (though I occasionally let Draq borrow her).  

Posted by:  Elspeth (also known as L Squared)

Ships:  Professor Sinistra and an adorable black dog, hopefully hints at a future Snape/McGonagall

Not much in the way of plot in this installment, but lots of character development and guilt.

Chapter Seven:  _In Which Several People Have Second Thoughts, and a Woman Talks to a Mirror._

            The day following the startling revelations in Dumbledore's office had been a distinctly difficult one for Minerva, beginning with the walk into the Great Hall at breakfast, when a storm of whispering had arisen among the students and the entire Slytherin table had pinned her with a variety of truly vicious glares.  Claire Sinistra, who had probably anticipated some of the rumors busily circulating among the student body, had not even shown up.

            The announcement Dumbledore had made at the beginning of the meal—"Contrary to what you may have heard, Professors McGonagall and Snape did not engage in a wizards' duel to the death last night, and Professor Sinistra is not pregnant with Voldemort's heir"—had put paid to the most outrageous of the stories, but the lively speculation continued throughout the day.

            Worse, almost, than the fact that a full quarter of her students spent the day acting even more spiteful toward her than the Slytherins usually did was the fact that she had brought the situation on herself.  Her actions toward Snape the night before had been totally uncalled for.   Even if he _had_ been sleeping with Claire, her fellow teachers' love lives were no business of hers, and that slap, though strangely satisfying, had been outrageously inappropriate.

            She actually felt rather guilty about the whole thing.  For once in his life, Snape actually _hadn't_ done anything wrong, and she had practically attacked him on the basis of what had been nothing more than an unfounded suspicion.  Why had she overreacted so horribly?  She had put two and two together and come up with five, and had responded in an irrational and totally unprofessional manner.  What on earth had possessed her to actually _hit_ him?

            At least he had accepted her apology, if in a slightly less than gracious manner.  Minerva was actually surprised to have gotten off so easily; she could only assume that the presence of Sirius Black had relegated her to the post of minor annoyance in comparison.

            Sirius Black!  She still felt a vague sense of disbelief when she thought back to the astonishing scene in the Headmaster's office the previous night.  For fourteen years, she, and the rest of the wizarding world, had been deceived, believing implicitly in his guilt.  She had been as shocked and appalled as anyone else that horrible All Saints Day, when the news of the Potters' deaths and Sirius's crimes had filtered throughout the wizarding community.  How, _how,_ she had kept asking herself, could he have done it?  It had just seemed so unbelievable, so inconsistent with his personality and prior behavior.  But to believe that Peter Pettigrew had been the real culprit?  That seemed still more unlikely.  Shy, timid little Peter a murderer?  But if Dumbledore believed it, was willing to let Sirius actually stay at Hogwarts, than it had to be true.

            In retrospect, the fact that Snape and the rest of the Hogwarts faculty—for she had been as intent on calling in the ministry as he had, if for slightly different reasons—had almost caused him to be given the dementors' kiss two years ago made her blood run cold, as did the very prospect of an innocent man spending twelve years in Azkaban.  He had seemed sane enough the previous night, but what internal scars might there be to match the ones on his wrists?

            If damage of any sort had been done, he was showing no signs of it at the moment.  Currently, "Snuffles" was sitting on the floor between Remus and Claire, engaged in a blatant and very canine display of begging, which Claire was responding to by giving him bits of her diner.  Harry, Ron, and Hermione, seated down at the Gryffindor table, were watching the two of them with speculative smiles.  Snape would probably have sneered and said something rude, but he was not present at the dinner table.  He was spending the evening meal down in the dungeons, supervising the Weasley twins' detention.  Snape was quite happy to miss diner if it meant that some of his least favorite students had to go hungry as well—though knowing the twins, they would be obtaining all the foodstuffs they could want from the house-elves later that evening.  Come to think of it, Severus hadn't been at any of the meals today.  It was probably just as well—Minerva wasn't sure if she was quite ready to face him yet.

^_~

            Claire Sinistra couldn't help smiling as she slipped "Snuffles" another tidbit of steak.  He was taking the bits of food she gave him with only a modicum of interest, and she was beginning to suspect that the whole begging act, effective as it was, was merely an excuse for him to put one paw up on her thigh and rest his chin on her knee.  Usually—and especially now that she knew "Snuffles" wasn't a real dog—she'd have bopped him on the nose and shoved the overly affectionate paw firmly off her leg, but at the moment, she didn't have the heart to push him away.

            "You do know that he's only doing that in order to get you to pet him, right?" Remus asked from beside her.  He leaned over and de-pawed her leg for her.  "Try not to flirt so blatantly in public, Snuffles, she's on to you now."

            "Oh, leave him," Claire said.  "It's sort of cute."  Sirius, hearing her, immediately returned the displaced paw to its former position.  "But if that paw goes another two inches higher, I'm cutting it off with my steak knife.  You hear that, 'Snuffles?'"

            Sirius gave her a wounded look.

            "I really ought to apologize to you and Snuffles for my little fit of hysterics last night.  I shouldn't have come barging into your room in the first place, and then to cause that whole big scene…  I mean, the whole faculty knows now, and I know Snuffles was supposed to be a secret.  I really am sorry."

            Remus shook his head.  "Don't apologize, Claire.  You had every right to react the way you did.  There was no way you could have known that Snuffle's was innocent, and to walk in and find the two of us like that…" he trailed off, looking away for a moment and pushing the steak and chips around on his plate.  "I should be the one apologizing.  I shouldn't have left my door unlocked like that; it was unforgivably careless.  What if I had done more than just growl at you?"

            "Remus, don't.  I was shrieking at you like a harpy and holding your friend at wandpoint.  I think you showed admirable restraint—I would have bitten me."

            Remus actually went pale at the thought.  "Oh God, don't even say that.  When I think about what could have happened…  It's just luck that I didn't do something horrible to you."

            Sirius gave a single, sharp bark, quite obviously a denial.  Claire agreed with him.

            "I don't believe you would ever hurt anyone, no matter what phase of the moon it was.  I was just—startled—last night.  Snuffles feels comfortable around you when you're transformed, after all."

            "That's because Snuffles is an idiot.  You saw his shoulder last night; he's far too careless around me when I'm transformed."

            "I think he knows that you would never seriously hurt him, especially not now that there's the wolfsbane potion."  Sirius nodded enthusiastically in support, a gesture which looked distinctly odd coming from a giant black dog, and Claire continued: "As he said, he probably deserved it anyway.  Most of those scars seemed to be rather self-inflicted."  She stopped, horrified, realizing what she had just said.  "I mean," she babbled hurriedly, trying to recover from her faux pas, "the motorcycle crash ones, and all those from the bludgers—anyone who plays a beater and tears around on that horrid muggle machine like he used to is asking for it."

            Sirius removed his head from her leg and gave her an offended look that spoke louder than words.  _I was not "asking for it," _the look said, _and my bike is not horrid._

            "Never insult Bike around Snuffles," Remus told her, choosing—thank the fates—to ignore the fist part of what she had said.  "He might bite you.  He loved her more than anything.  That's probably the real reason he never had a steady girlfriend—he was engaged to a '69 Triumph.  That's why James and I christened her the Black Bitch."  He grinned, and for a moment the ghost of a much younger Remus Lupin peeked out from those golden eyes.  "Insert apostrophe and 'S' where appropriate."

            "That's horrible," Claire said, trying to stifle the impulse to laugh.

            "It was mainly James's idea," Remus defended himself.  "He was also the one behind Snuffles' immense collection of monogrammed items.  I swear, by the time James was done, he must have owned more handkerchiefs, sweaters, pens, and sets of luggage with his initials on them than any wizard in Britain."

            "Why monogrammed?" Claire asked in confusion.  "I don't get the joke."

            "You mean all those romantic evenings atop the astronomy tower and he never told you?"

            "They weren't romantic evenings!  We actually _were_ studying astronomy.  He was even better at it than I was, even though I was two years ahead, what with his father being an astronomer and all. Anyway, told me what?"

            Again the wicked grin.  "His middle name," Remus informed her solemnly, "is Orion."

            Claire drew a blank for a moment, but after a few seconds' thought, she had figured it out.  This time, she was unable to stifle her laughter.

^_~

            Snape, ensconced behind his desk in the potions classroom, had rarely felt less like laughing, despite the fact that the two thoroughly miserable Weasley twins were supplying what would normally have been a considerable amount of entertainment value.  Under most circumstances, the sight of Fred Weasley balanced precariously on top of one of Filch's ladders, diligently scrubbing away the carefully painted "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here," emblazoned above the classroom door, while his brother got ready to scour all the cauldrons in the classroom with a toothbrush, would have been a source of great personal satisfaction.  Had they honestly thought that after six and a half years of grading their pathetic attempts at essays, he would fail to recognize their handwriting?

            At the moment, however, even the prospect of _Harry Potter_ up to his elbows in cleaning fluid would have failed to delight.  No petty exercise of power over troublesome students could wipe away the events of the night before, or change the fact that Draco Malfoy had missed Potions that morning, as well as half of his History of Magic class.  

            It was that second bit of information which was the most troublesome, making the painful scenes with Black and McGonagall dwindle almost into insignificance.  Draco, Snape knew, had been at summoned to a Death Eater raid.  He had felt the ghost of the summoning through his Mark that morning, even though it had not been directed at him.  Snape was considered too valuable as a spy on Dumbledore and provider of poisons to risk blowing his cover by calling him away for every raid, but the newly inducted Draco would be required to join in every mission and meeting, until his loyalty and worth were proven.

            Snape remembered his own "breaking in" period, nearly twenty years ago now.  He had been only a few months older than Draco, and the excitement, the sense of camaraderie among his compatriots, the heady feeling of power that came from holding another person's life in your hands, the thrill of receiving approval and recognition for the first time in his life, had been intoxicating.

            When his father had been murdered by aurors in his sixth year, Lucius Malfoy had arranged the funeral while Snape had still been out of contact in the Hogwarts infirmary.  He had sent an owl—the only one that had arrived for Snape during the whole affair, other than the belated official notice from the ministry—offering condolences, sympathy, and a chance for revenge.  It had been as simple as that, one small step at a time down the road to Hades, until eventually he was in so deep that even Caius's departure hadn't been enough to bring him to his senses.  It had taken an afternoon spent "volunteering" at the site of a Death Eater raid—at Dumbledore's invitation; the old man was far more ruthless than anyone gave him credit for—to finally do that.

            It was easy, so easy to slip into the darkness, to tell yourself that you were only following orders, that they deserved it, that the ends justified the means, that you were a part of something special and larger than yourself, and you couldn't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs…  Eventually, one became desensitized to the blood, the screams.  From watching on the sidelines while someone else killed to holding the wand yourself was not so very great a step to take.

            How long would it be before Draco took that final stride over into darkness?  All the necessary ingredients were there: his resentment of Harry and the other Gryffindors, the unthinking prejudices Lucius had drummed into him since birth, his natural Slytherin affinity for power and thirst to prove himself, and his absolute trust in his father and in Snape himself, the two who had between them conspired to sell the child's soul into evil.

            He had fully deserved that slap McGonagall had given him the night before, if not for quite the reason she had delivered it.  Bad as it was to know that she was willing to believe that he would actually have an affair with Claire Sinistra—_Sinistra_, who had spent a large portion of her seventh year on top of the astronomy tower doing God knew what with Sirius Black!—to have her learn what his recent activities had truly been would be far worse.  If she had had any idea of what he had done, she wouldn't have stopped with one blow, she would have pummeled him to a bloody pulp—and she would have been right to.  This January he had betrayed all his responsibilities, broken all the promises he had made when he was appointed head of Slytherin House.  He was supposed to protect his students, take care of them, _keep_ them from making the same mistakes he had made, not tender them a personal introduction to Voldemort.

            On top of that, there was the planned invasion of Hogwarts that had been discussed at the last meeting with Voldemort.  When it came, and it would come soon, more damage would be done.  To the school, to the students, to the one place that all the wizarding world held to be safe, inviolate.  An impenetrable fortress that could only be assailed through treachery.  Three guesses as to whom Voldemort had picked as his Trojan Horse.  Dumbledore had been warned, of course, but forewarned was not the same as forearmed, despite what muggles said.

            Snape was startled from his thoughts by a sudden, resounding crash that reverberated off the dungeon walls.  Fred, still perched unsteadily on top of the ladder, had dropped the bucket of Mrs. Skowers Magical Mess Remover he had been holding onto the stone floor, sending splashes of cleaning fluid everywhere.  Snape strongly suspected that he had done it on purpose.

            "Fred-a-George," Caius croaked, glowering at the unfortunately Weasley from his position on the back of Snape's chair; he had held a special animosity toward the Weasley twins, whom he seemed to regard as a single unit, ever since George had tried to feed him an exploding mouse.  "Not-a-gain.  Ten points from Grif-in-dor."

            "Excellent idea, Caius," Snape purred, reaching up to absentmindedly preen his fingers through the bird's feathers.  "Mr. Weasley, you are down here to clean, not to create an even greater mess.  Ten points from Gryffindor for being clumsy and careless."

^_~

            Draco Malfoy sat in the huge, marble tub in the palatial prefects' bathroom, staring contemplatively at the raw-looking, half-healed brand on his left arm.  The Dark Mark was a part of him now, burned into his skin and bone forever.  "You can flay all of the skin off your arm," Professor Snape had told him before his induction, "and when it grows back, the Mark will still be there."  Draco had tried not to think about how he could possibly have learned that.  Could it have been a punishment of some sort for Death Eaters who showed disloyal tendencies or failed in their duties?  He hoped not.

            His Mark still hurt, a nagging throb like a bad sunburn, but even the sharp sting awoken by the soapy water couldn't compare to the vicious, burning agony that struck when he was summoned.  The first time, the shock of it had literally driven him to his knees, spearing through his arm as though the branding iron had once again been pressed against his skin.  It was fortunate for his cover that the summons had come during potions class.  Any other teacher would have demanded an explanation for why he suddenly had to leave—Snape had provided one for him, announcing to the entire class that Draco was officially dismissed to the hospital wing to "wash the dissolving potion off his arm."

            He had immediately quit the dungeons and sneaked off the Hogwarts Grounds into the Forbidden Forest, where he had put into the practice the apparating skills his father had taught him over the summer—as far as Lucius Malfoy was concerned, the laws against underage spell casting were meant only to apply to mudbloods and other such lower forms of life.

            What had followed had been…an interesting experience.  He had been desperately nervous, afraid that he would chicken out, make a mistake, somehow fail to live up to the standards expected of a Malfoy, but as it turned out, he need not have worried.  When the crucial moment came, he had been cool and controlled, unemotional.  Everything had around him had gone clear and sharp, the world narrowing down until it contained only him and the low-ranking ministry official at the other end of his wand.  One brief cruciatus curse, and the man had spilled all he knew—which hadn't been much, unfortunately.  Draco had been rather hoping that his first mission would accomplish something of earth-shattering importance, though even at the time he had recognized the feeling as childish.  

            Macnair had killed the man with brief flick of his wand, almost offhandedly.  Vincent Crabbe had told Draco once that he had it from his father that Macnair was one of the most accomplished casters of _avada kedavra_ in the world—due, it was said, to dedicated practice.

            He had been summoned twice more since that first time, each excursion being more demanding—and having a higher body count—than the one before it.  This morning's mission, a spot of muggle torture in a village in Shropshire, had somehow been different from the first two.  The last victim, a muggle woman, had lasted a long time, crying and pleading with them to stop, asking again and again why they were doing this to her.  It had been much harder to maintain his detachment for that one, and impossible to feel smug afterwards, as he had about the ministry official.  She had been blond, around his mother's age, and the Lestranges, who had been the ones doing the largest share of the torturing, had not used the cruciatus curse.  There had been a great deal of blood.  He had had to clean his robes off himself; he didn't dare give them to the house-elves.  It had made him late for his morning History of Magic class, but luckily, Professor Binns had not even noticed.

            The more he thought about that last mission—and he thought about it a great deal, as the subject had a habit of creeping into his head at unexpected moments—the more disturbed he began to be.

            He still agreed with everything Voldemort said.  It wasn't that he didn't share the Death Eaters' goals; he still felt that their aims were noble, their grievances justified.  It was just that their methods…

            It wasn't like he hadn't _known_ about the muggle torture and the killings, it was just, he hadn't expected them to be so…messy.  He couldn't stop thinking about the way that woman had just screamed and screamed.

            A sudden feeling of rawness in his arm brought Draco back to himself with a start, and he realize that the water around him had now gone cold, and that the skin of his left forearm had gone red; he had been vigorously scrubbing at it non-stop for at least fifteen minutes.

^_~

"Happy fortieth birthday, Polaris," the woman sighed to herself as she looked in the mirror, letting her hair loose from its customary braid in preparation for bed.

            "I don't want to tell you this, honey, but you've got another gray hair," the magicked looking-glass answered back critically.  "And the circles under your eyes are back."

            "Yes, I can see that," Polaris snapped at her reflection, turning away in disgust.  She didn't need the mirror's snide comments to notice the threads of silver working their way insidiously into her black curls, the tiny crows' feet forming at the corners of her eyes, the dark circles born of long hours and days filled with worry.  The past few months had not been good ones.

            Alastor Moody, her old boss, had contacted her at the beginning of the summer with word that Voldemort was returning to power—something her new boss, Fudge, still vehemently maintained to be untrue, despite the recently killings and the reappearance of the Dark Mark.

            "Damn the man," she muttered to herself as she picked up the day's copy of the _Evening Prophet_ to see yet another picture of a burned out building—this one in Shropshire—the skull-and-serpent floating unmistakable above the ruins.  "Still claiming that it's all the work of a few crackpots!  How did he ever manage to become Minister of Magic?  Robert Brocklehurst was right; he is Neville bloody Chamberlain—he's worse!"

            The way Fudge managed to stay firmly mewed up inside his protective walls of denial despite the daily inpourings of evidence to the contrary was truly spectacular.  The Ministry had lost a half-dozen employees in the past two months alone, if one counted those who had died of suspiciously well-timed "natural causes"—and Polaris did.  Voldemort's poison brewers were obviously back at work.

            According to her old partner, Vesta, now working for the Department of Mysteries, Voldemort and his Death Eaters were planning something big, possibly something involving Hogwarts.  "But you have to keep this quiet, Pub," she had said.  "The agent who sent us the information is in a very precarious position, and if he's compromised, Dumbledore will lose his only man on the inside."  Polaris had sniffed disapprovingly.  Not only did she hate it when Vesta called her by that stupid nickname—parents should never give their children a set of initials that spelled words—she also felt nothing but contempt for Dumbledore's "man on the inside."  Vesta's old school friend was a greasy, thoroughly reprehensible young man, who, if justice had taken its proper course, would have been rotting in Azkaban.  

            Underneath her disapproval, however, there had lurked a cold, nagging fear: What if her brother was involved in the rumored attack?  Every crime her brother committed, every wizard or muggle he killed, was another addition to the burden of guilt she already carried.  She had failed to see him for what he was, been deceived by the act of friendship and loyalty he had put up, and thus, all the horror and destruction he had eventually been responsible for could in a sense be laid at her feet.

            When, when were Fudge or Dumbledore going to order a contingent of aurors to Hogwarts?  Polaris would volunteer for such a mission in a heartbeat; far better to lay in wait for the enemy than to run around England surveying the burned out sites of Death Eater raids.  Perhaps this time, she would be the one to take her traitorous younger sibling into custody.

^_~

Thank you to everyone who reviewed me (wow, 63 reviews * jumps up and down and cheers * )!

 Sarah-Dunleavy:  You read "Lil Red Riding Hood"!?!  You weren't supposed to know that that story even existed.  Please, please don't tell Mommy and Daddy that it exists!  I will pay you not to (I can't afford to shell out much, but I really will).  For future reference: don't read anything marked "slash."  If you have ever wondered what "slash" is, now you know.

LoveChilde and Lady Foxfire:  Thank you; that slapping scene was planned out weeks in advance and I'm glad y'all enjoyed it as much as I did.

Faith Accompli, Leigh, and Alla:  Yea!  I love hearing that people like my Sirius and Snape (and that my attempts at humor are succeeding).

Siriuslyinlove and You-Know-Who:  I'm glad you liked the last chapter; it's my favorite of all the ones I've written so far.

ViEiRA:  Here you go: another Draco POV (there will be more of him in chapter ten, and maybe in nine).

Moonwing, Giesbrecht, and Alexandra Black:  Sorry, the next chapter will be a bit delayed, as I'm going home for spring break this week, and may not be posted until the end of March.

Chad-Catsmeat:  You think Sirius and Sinistra would go well together?  Thank you!  I purposefully designed her for him, so I'm glad people other than me approve of the pairing.

Taracollowen:  Sorry, Fudge will survive for the moment (the good guys can't kill him because they're good, and the bad guys won't because he helps them too much).  But just for you, I've included more Fudge bashing in this chapter.

Chochang913:  Yep, my chapter titles are heavily inspired by the ones in Patricia C. Wrede's wonderful _Dealing With Dragons_ (sounds almost like a title you'd find in the Hogwarts library, doesn't it?).

Fawkesnflame:  Thank you!  Sirius will be in all future chapters except chapter ten.

Shanara:  You're going to encourage your daughter to read this?  Wow! (I hope she's over thirteen, 'cause there's going to be some fairly gruesome bits in the next couple of chapters).

Shinigami:  (Great name, by the way) you're going to like Polaris Black; she agrees with you about Snape.

RADKA:  About the Minerva/Severus stuff:  I know J.K. Rowling has said that McGonagall's around 70, but when I first read the books, that interview hadn't been released yet, and I always pictured her to be about 50, so that's how old she is in my little HP universe (age gap is down from 35 years to 15 years, that make things any better?).

CLS:  Thank you!  I went to a very small high school and now attend an even smaller college and rumors in both places spread like wildfire, so I figured they would do so at Hogwarts as well.

Ozma:  I'm on your favorites? * dances around in a circle * Yea! (you're on mine, you know, go check).  I'm glad you liked the scene with Sirius's scars—I actually put a lot of thought into those (and thank you for the compliment about Sinistra; I'm trying hard to keep her out of Mary Sue territory).

Next up, Chapter Eight:  _In Which Many Nasty Things Happen_.

            Stay tuned for "When Dementors Attack Part II: the Return of the Dementors!"


	8. In Which Many Nasty Things Happen.

Disclaimer: Characters and situations all belong to JK Rowlings, not me. Caius the raven belongs to Draqonelle, who has kindly allowed me to borrow him (Vesta McGonagall is hers too). In addition, I got the name Polaris Black for Sirius's sister from someone else's fanfic, but I can't remember whose (her character, however, belongs entirely to me and Draqonelle).

Posted by: Elspeth (A.K.A. L Squared)

Ships: Professor Sinistra and an adorable black dog, hopefully hints at a future Snape/McGonagall

*Warning: this chapter is rated R for violence instead of the usual PG-13 *

Chapter Eight: _In Which Many Nasty Things Happen_.

Faculty meetings at Hogwarts were usually cheerful, cozy affairs, held in front of a roaring fire in the teachers' lounge, with hot tea and snacks provided by the house elves. Certain things about them had become routine. Hagrid would bring rock cake, which no one would eat, and request permission to import a dragon for Care of magical Creatures class (Dumbledore always said no), Poppy Pomfrey would complain about a shortage of bandages and ointments, or the unusually large numbers of students who reported in sick every time exams came around, Sybil Trelawney would arrive fashionably late and offer to read everyone's tea leaves (no one ever took her up on the offer), and Snape would lurk in a dark corner with a potions text and make catty comments about everyone else. This time, however, things were different.

As soon as the teachers were assembled, before anyone could introduce any new business, Dumbledore rose to his feet and spoke, his manner unusually grave.

"We have received warnings through several of our spies that Voldemort is planning to launch an attack on Hogwarts before Beltane. That means that  
the attack could come at any point in the next four weeks, though we are hoping to receive a certain amount of advance warning."

There was an explosion of shocked murmurs, and several of the teachers  
turned and looked at Snape, who buried his nose even more firmly in the  
February/March issue of the Alchemists' Journal.

"We must, of course, be on our guard at all times. However, I believe  
that we should keep our preparations to ourselves for the time being. We  
don't want this information to reach the students and cause a panic. Most  
of all, we do not want our knowledge of the attack to seep into the general  
wizarding world and get back to Voldemort. We would lose any advantage we  
might have, and the agents who delivered us the information would be placed  
in grave danger."

"Wonderful," Snape muttered under his breath. "My life depends upon Sybil  
Trelawney's ability to keep a secret. I may as well perform _avada kedavra_  
on myself now." Remus was pretty sure that only he and McGonagall, who was  
seated right next to Snape, had heard him.

"Don't worry," McGonagall whispered sotto voiced, "No one ever believes  
anything she says anyway."

"As a further precaution," Dumbledore continued, "I have arranged through  
several contacts in the Ministry to have an auror sent to help us defend  
the school in the-admittedly unlikely-event that the attackers manage to  
breach our outer defenses. I would, of course, have preferred an entire  
team of aurors, but I'm afraid that would have been too suspicious."

"Who are they sending?" Flitwick asked, bouncing enthusiastically on his  
stack of cushions.

"And how are we going to explain her presence?" Sprout chimed in.

"Ms. Black will be arriving tomorrow, ostensibly to start a dueling class  
for the seventh years."

At the sound of the name, Sirius let out a yelp of surprise, so startled  
that he reverted back to his original form. "What?"

"Oh God, not her." Snape flinched visibly, his demeanor suddenly calling  
to mind an approaching thunderstorm. "But, Headmaster…"

"Severus, I know you and Polaris have had your difficulties, but the two  
of you will be working toward the same goal now. She, like you, will have  
the best interests of the school at heart. I'm sure you two can come to an  
understanding."

"I can only stand to spend so long in the presence of a woman who  
habitually refers to me as 'that criminal scum.' My yearly quota of verbal  
abuse has already been filled."

"Now, Severus…"

Surprisingly, Sirius chimed in in support of his long-term nemesis. "But  
why Pols? What are we going to tell her about me? If she finds out I'm here,  
she'll turn me in. She won't wait to hear any explanations; she'll have a team of aurors with handcuffs at the door before you can blink. And I can't just   
pretend like I don't know her an' act like an ordinary dog, I know I can't."

"Sirius, I know this is going to be hard for you," Dumbledore said. "But Polaris is the one of the only aurors with previous war-time experience still practicing, and one of the Ministry's best. More importantly, she's one of the few Ministry personnel who doesn't side with Fudge in denying Voldemort's return. And she asked for the assignment. There would be no credible way to refuse her."

"I'm sure she won't guess," Claire Sinistra said reassuringly. "You're a very convincing dog."

^_~

The Great Hall was abuzz with whispers several days later when the students entered for the evening meal to discover a strange woman seated at the teachers' table, between Professors McGonagall and Lupin.

"Who is she?" Seamus Finnigan asked, as the Gryffindor students sat down to dinner, all of them casting surreptitious looks at the front of the hall.

"I don't know," Ron said. "Maybe she's a new teacher."

"I hope not." Lavender shivered ostentatiously. "She looks mean."

To everyone's surprise, it was Neville Longbottom who provided them with an answer.

"That's Polaris Black," he said. "She's an auror. She used to be friends with my parents. She came to see me and my grandmother a few times. She was pretty nice, but she can be sort of scary sometimes."

"Polaris Black?" Hermione looked excited. "She's in _Black and Gold: A History of the Aurors_. She was one of the first women to join the aurors. She, Vesta McGonagall, and Denise Longbottom worked as a team in the late seventies. The famous "Moody's Angels," named after that old American television show, I think."

"Polaris _Black_? Is she related to Sirius Black?"

"She's his older sister," Neville spoke up again. "You shouldn't mention it to her, though. It will make her mad."

"I didn't know Sirius Black had a sister," Harry said. Actually, he realized, he didn't know much about his godfather's past prior to his years at Hogwarts. The thought made him feel vaguely guilty.

"You know," George said, "I remember Dad talking about that once. I think he said she actually testified at his sentencing."

"You mean, she tried to keep the Ministry from sending him to Azkaban?"

"No," Fred replied, jumping in over his brother. "She told them to give him the Dementors' Kiss."

"Her own brother?" Seamus was horrified. "I mean, yeah, he was an evil murderer who worked for You-Know-Who, but still! Her own brother!"

"She's one of the Ministry's top field aurors,' Hermione put in. "She's captured or killed more dark wizards than anyone else except Mad Eye Moody. It's in_ The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts_."

"She sounds creepy," Lavender said. "I hope she's not here to replace Professor Lupin."

"I don't think so," Harry said. "I heard a rumor that the school was going to start up a dueling class for sixth and seventh years. Maybe she's going to teach that." And maybe, he thought, she had also come to Hogwarts to help protect the school from Voldemort. He hadn't missed the worried looks on the faces of the faculty and staff in recent weeks, or the Potions Master's ever increasing absences, many of which were now accompanied by equally blessed, but under the circumstances somewhat suspicious, disappearances on the part of Draco Malfoy. Then there were the flashes of pain that had begun shooting through his scar again, infrequent, but worrisome. Voldemort was planning something. The sudden appearance of a famous auror at the school should have been reassuring, but somehow, it was not. Still, the concept of a dueling class—a _real_ one this time, with a competent teacher—sounded awfully exciting. Maybe fifth years would be allowed to sign up for it too.

"Well," Ron said, gesturing at the teachers' table, where Polaris was engaged in a heated argument with Snape, "if she doesn't like Snape, she can't be all bad."

At the other end of the Great Hall, the Hogwarts faculty had their own worries, a major one being that the evening was going to end in bloodshed and drawn wands. Snape, who had spent the entire day down in the dungeons bent over a cauldron, hadn't realized that Polaris had arrived at Hogwarts that afternoon until he showed up in the Great Hall for dinner. If he had been aware of her presence in the school, he probably would have stayed away. As it was, they had spent the entire meal sniping at each other, their remarks gradually becoming more and more heated.

"Polaris Black, what a pleasure," Snape had begun, in a voice that made it obvious that there was no pleasure involved whatsoever. "How absolutely delightful to see you. You always have the most charming little pieces of wisdom to share with me. I've begun writing them down for posterity. I think my favorite so far is 'The only good Death Eater is a dead Death Eater.' It has such a nice ring to it."

The frown line between Polaris's brows deepened, and her face took on a look of disgust. "Severus. You've decided to stop hiding in the dungeon and come up to eat with us respectable people, have you?" Snape didn't answer, he merely glared at her sullenly.

"Vesta gave me a message for you," she continued contemptuously. "I believe her exact words were: 'Tell Sev Darling to drag his sorry arse out of that dungeon and get some exercise. He probably needs it. Tell him the consumptive look went out with the Victorians.' Why she bothers with a piece of slime like you I'll never know."

Snape's jaw tightened. "You leave Vesta McGonagall out of this. She didn't know anything about it."

"I would never insult Vesta; she's the only decent Slytherin I know. She may not have known what you were _then_, but she does now. And she suspected, we all suspected. Looks like events have proven us right."

"Of course. You're always right, aren't you."

Remus, seated somewhat uncomfortably between Snape and Polaris, began to wish heartily that he were somewhere else, anywhere else. The two of them rarely came into contact with each other—probably intentionally—but when they did, it was never pretty. It was a good thing Snape never brought Caius into the Great Hall, or Sirius's sister would probably have ended the night minus an eye.

"Be as sarcastic as you want, it doesn't change anything. I know what you've been up to. We've recently lost three ministry officials, two to heart attacks and one to stroke. Both were under forty and in excellent health. The mediwizards are certain it was poison, but both magical and muggle means have failed to turn up a trace. I can count on the fingers of one hand the potion makers that good, and I can only think of one who might be serving Voldemort."

"I have reasons for what I do. Reasons even you ought to be able to understand."

"Reasons," Polaris sneered. "Once a criminal, always a criminal. I've seen your work first hand, Severus, and there are no 'reasons' that could justify that sort of thing. You think you can get away with it, earn some sort of redemption?" Her eyes were twin blue flames, like the pilot lights on a muggle stove, burning with a zealous glow. "I'm watching you, Severus. I know exactly who and what your kind are, and there is no forgiveness for murderers such as you. The blood of innocents never washes off."

Snape looked for a moment as if he'd been slapped, then his face turned red with fury. "You're every bit as murderous as I am, _Auror_ Black," he spat. "How many unforgivable curses have you performed in the course of your 'sacred duties'? Your hands are red to the wrists. Your whole family is homicidal!"

"Oh, yes, speaking of families," Sybil Trelawney said airily, apparently totally oblivious to the choking miasma of hostility hanging over the table, "It was so interesting to hear the news about your brother. Of course, the stars had told me everything, but it is nice to see it confirmed." Remus groaned inwardly. Had she forgotten that they were supposed to keep Sirius's presence at Hogwarts secret, or had she simply not been listening at the faculty meeting?

Both Snape and Polaris favored her with glares that could have killed a basilisk. "I no longer have a brother," Polaris said flatly. "And the only thing _you_ ever saw in the stars was a bunch of pretty lights. And _what_ news? There haven't been any sightings of the traitor in months. Remus, please keep your monster of a dog away from me. It keeps trying to push its nose into my hand."

"He just wants you to like him, Polaris."

"He wants me to feed him, you mean. You really shouldn't bring animals to dinner."

And now, Remus thought, Snape will make some cutting remark referring to the fact that I am werewolf. Polaris had practically hand-fed him the opportunity.

"That would be a little difficult for Lupin, under the circumstances," Snape sneered, right on cue. "And the loss of his presence at the dinner table would be an incalculable tragedy."

"I would rather eat with a werewolf than with someone who's sold his soul." Polaris's voice was biting, her working-class London accent, normally deliberately absent, sneaking back in around the edges of her words.

Snape's hand made an almost involuntary twitch toward his wand—Remus seriously considered ducking under the table for a moment—before he managed, with visible effort, to get himself back under control.

Jaw clenched and a vein in his temple throbbing, he slammed his chair back from the table with such force that it nearly toppled over.

"I do not have to stay here and be insulted," he snarled. "I am not going to be goaded into drawing on you so you can have the satisfaction of hauling me away for threatening an auror. Stay away from my dungeons, Ms. Black, stay away from my Slytherins, and most of all, stay away from me." Without looking at anyone else, he turned and stalked from the room, cloak flaring out angrily behind him.

"That went well," Minerva remarked caustically, her face registering disapproval of both Snape and Polaris. "I thought the Headmaster asked you to be polite."

"I will not be insulted by the likes of him." Polaris's voice was flat and cold. "Dumbledore should never have hired the man; he's far too trusting."

"Perhaps," Remus ventured, conscious of the look of misery in Padfoot's pale eyes, as he sat gazing silently up at Polaris, "he merely believes in giving people second chances."

"How many second chances do you think there are for all the people dark wizards kill? If it weren't for Dumbledore, he'd have spent the past fourteen years locked up in Azakaban with my brother. If the Ministry knew its business, they both would have been executed."

Remus reached a hand down and rubbed Padfoot's floppy ears reassuringly. 

"Polaris, you don't mean that."

"I never say anything I don't mean. If I had that traitor at my wand point right now, I'd call in the dementors myself."

The moment the declaration emerged from Polaris's mouth, Padfoot got to his feet and followed Snape out of the room.

^_~

As the next few days went by, the atmosphere of the castle took on a charged quality, like air on the brink of a thunderstorm. Snape sulked in his dungeons like an animal at bay, refusing to emerge even for meals, while the rest of the teachers became increasingly twitchy and on edge, their unease eventually spilling over to affect the students as well. The new dueling classes were another source of potential conflict. When they began, every Gryffindor eligible for them signed up, but many of the sixth and seventh-year Slytherins opted not to take them, a pointed boycott of Polaris that did nothing to improve the already volatile tension between the two houses.

Sirius had quickly become a regular spectator in Polaris's classroom, sitting quietly in a corner while she snapped out orders at her students, mainly Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors. The past fourteen years had done little to change Polaris's temper, or the focused, relentless determination with which she approached all challenges. If anything, she had become more stern and unbending than ever. The students who signed up for her classes, expecting fun and excitement, were unpleasantly surprised to discover that she was even stricter than Snape (though not as sarcastic), and even less patient with rule breaking than McGonagall.

It was almost painful to see Polaris again. To be so close to her, able to watch her teach her students they way she had once taught him, listen to the voice that had once scolded him when he got in trouble and rung with pride when describing his exploits as an auror-in-training to her co-workers, and be unable to speak to her or make his identity known in any way was maddening. She was the only family he had left, other than Remus and Harry, and it hurt intolerably to see how much she hated him, hear the contempt and disgust that now filled her voice whenever she spoke of him. And the sympathetic looks the rest of the faculty kept giving him when that happened were becoming increasingly annoying—he didn't want pity, especially not from Claire (though the extra pats that usually resulted from it were nice). Still, at least he and Pols were near each other again. Having his ears scratched when he visited her classroom and his nose bopped when he got too close to the table at meals was not exactly the sort of brother-sister reunion he'd hoped for, but it was better than nothing. 

^_~

The expected attack finally occurred some three weeks after Polaris's arrival.

The first signs of trouble came a few minutes after midnight, when all the students had long since retired to their dormitories, and even most of the teachers were already in bed. Sirius, curled up in animagus form in front of Remus's fireplace, was jerked out of sleep by a loud alarm that echoed through the castle hallways, bouncing cacophonously off the stone walls and hammering at his sensitive ears. Someone was trying to breach the school defences.

He paced back and forth impatiently, fur on end, while his friend threw clothes on and grabbed his wand, and then the two of them raced out of the room and down the hallway toward the Great Hall.

The stretch of corridor in front of the entrance to the Gryffindor common room was in an uproar, with students in varying degrees of wakefulness and stages of undress spilling out of the portrait doorway.

Harry, hair even more rumpled than usual and glasses askew, was at the front of the crowd. "Professor Lupin! What's going on? We're being attacked, aren't we?"

Ron and Hermione, faces equally concerned, pushed through the doorway behind him.

"Everyone go back inside." Remus ordered. "Yes, Harry, you too. The teachers will take care of this. Hermione, I need you to start moving the younger students back into their dormitories."

As Hermione and the other Gryffindor prefects started herding the students back inside, Minerva McGonagall came charging determinedly down the hallway, her customary aura of dignity completely unaffected by the fact that she was wearing a plaid flannel nightgown (albeit one that covered more flesh than most people's snow suits).

"All seventh years get their wands and come with me," she barked. "Professor Snape needs you down in the great hall. Harry, stay here!"

As McGonagall, Sirius, Remus and the Gryffindor seventh years made their hurried way down to the Great Hall, Sirius's nose picked up the scent of demiguise hair, along with the unmistakable smell of Harry. That damned invisibility cloak! Every time Harry got into trouble he swore to himself that he was going to confiscate it, but somehow he always ended up relenting at the last minute. For a moment, he was strongly tempted to sniff his godson out and reveal him, but he finally decided that A) Harry would only sneak down again anyway, and B) the only way any Death Eaters were getting into the Great Hall to threaten the final line of defence was over Snape's dead body. The Potions Master had not been happy about the necessity of remaining behind the front lines, but it was obvious to even Snape at his most irrational that charging into the fray and hexing Death Eaters left and right would blow his cover faster than anything short of walking up to Voldemort and flicking him off. But if he couldn't be out there defending the school openly, he could still make damn sure no stray attackers managed to force their way inside.

The Great Hall was controlled chaos, with half-dressed teachers and seventh-year students dashing around in wild-eyed alarm. Snape, sallow face set in a deeper than usual scowl, was snarling out orders at his teenage draftees, posting them at various strategic points around the room.

"They're at the edge of the anti-apparition defences," he shouted at Sirius and the others as made their way to the door. "In the Forbidden Forest! The barrier that keeps them from walking on to the grounds will go down in five minutes." Oh gee, now how could Snape possibly know that?

The three of them (_sans_ invisibility-cloaked tagalongs—Sirius made sure of it) pushed past Vector, Sprout, and Claire Sinistra, who had stationed themselves, wands in hand, in front of the main doors, and pelted across the grounds towards the Forbidden Forest.

As Sirius and the other two neared the edge of the woods, he could see flashes of light reflecting off the trees, and hear the sounds of muffled shouting. Dumbledore, Hagrid, Hooch, Flitwick and Polaris were engaged in a heated fight with a group of shadowy figures in black. Death Eaters! Sirius could feel a low growl starting deep in his throat as he flung himself into the battle.

Distantly, he could hear the others shouting spells and hexes, but at the moment, the entire world had narrowed to include only himself and the black-clad figures. Padfoot's pack instincts were not as strong as Remus's wolf's, but they were most definitely there. These were intruders, invaders. They had killed James and Lily, were here to kill his pack-brother, his sister, Harry. They were going to die!

One of the Death Eaters turned, wand raised, and fired off a curse at Remus and McGonagall. The two of them threw themselves to the ground, and moments later the man was hit in the chest by at least twelve stone's worth of vicious, angry canine. 

Sirius worried his teeth in the Death Eater's arm, ignoring the shower of sparks the desperate man tried to send into his face. With a scream, the man dropped his wand.

"_Incisio canina_!" The shout came from somewhere behind him, and Sirius felt a slash of pain across his back. Enraged, he let go of the fallen Death Eater to launch himself at this new threat. The second Death Eater's short, stocky body went flying to the ground under Sirius's considerable momentum, and as sharp, white teeth met thick, muscular throat, he gave a horrible, gurgling scream. Sirius ignored it. Blood, copper-tasting and steaming hot, splurted out, splashing into his eyes and nose. He bit down harder, and felt something _crunch_ between his teeth.

Lifting his face from the still twitching Death Eater's ruined throat, Sirius caught sight of something that cut through the his haze of bloody-minded fury as cleanly as the cutting curse had sliced the skin of his back. Polaris, wand alight and eyes burning like an avenging angel's, was standing her ground to Flitwick's left, blasting off curses at the attackers while the old dueling champion deflected the hexes cast at them in return. Behind her, wand aimed and ready to fire, was a gaunt, slightly stooped figure that Sirius recognized instantly as Lestrange.

"Polaris," he shouted frantically, returning instantly to human form. "Behind you!"

Polaris whipped around just in time to see Lestrange raise his wand hand high. "_Coagulatio sangui_—…"

"_Avada kedavra_!"

There was a flash of green light, and the limp form of Lestrange collapsed onto the forest floor. The school's defenders stood frozen for a second, staring at Polaris in shock. The spell was broken a split second later when an equally gaunt, but unmistakably feminine form broke forward from the ranks of Death Eaters and lunged at Polaris. "You killed my husband, auror bitch!!"

"_Impedimenta_. _Expelliarmus_."

At that moment, Sirius felt a familiar wave of cold roll across his skin. The thinned-out ranks of the Death Eaters were being filled in by other, taller, cloaked figures, whose slimy hands reached out menacingly and whose dark robes hung motionless despite the wind.

_Oh bloody, sodding Hell!_ All thoughts of changing back into Padfoot were forgotten, as were Polaris, Remus, and even the battle raging around him. There was nothing in the world but those grey, eyeless faces; that slow, rattling breathing; the numbing, killing cold that was seeping through his body and soul.

He could hear voices in his head, screaming and shouting.

"_Lily and James, Sirius, how could you!"_

"_I have no brother, not anymore. Give the treacherous killer to the dementors!_"

A white mist was creeping across the edges of his vision. The dark forest clearing was replaced by burned out rubble, disaster site after disaster site, littered with tortured, broken bodies, all the blood and horror and death two years as an auror could offer. His mother's funeral; watching the casket slowly lowered into the damp earth as thirteen year-old Polaris and five year-old Altair held onto his hands. Remus, in tears and yelling at him "_I could have turned him into a werewolf and then they'd of made me leave! They'd of locked me up and put me to sleep! I hate you!"_

He could see James, lying motionless on the ground. His glasses were broken. James was going to be so mad; he hated it when his glasses got damaged. He wouldn't wake up. James, Lily, wake up! Harry's crying, can't you hear him? Stop it, wake up, you're scaring me! Cold, so cold. Dark mist swirling, thick and icy. Stone walls. Wet stone walls, cold and dripping. I didn't do it! I didn't! Let me out! Hard, grey stone, wet, icy mist, closing in, choking him. He could feel them coming closer, hear their sucking breaths, feel slimy, mildewed robes brushing against him as they gathered around, attracted by easy prey. Cold…

Sirius slid to the ground, curling into a defensive ball as the world went black and cold and empty as the void of space. He never saw Remus's silver wolf patronus charge past him into the dementors, to be joined by McGonagall's tiger and Dumbledore's phoenix, and even Flitwick's storm of silver butterflies. He didn't see his werewolf friend fling himself over Sirius's body and light fire to a persistent dementor's robes with an Incendio charm, or see Dumbledore and Flitwick drive the remaining Death Eaters back into the trees with an explosion of white light as the school's more powerful security barriers came back on line. And when Remus began to float him back toward the school on a conjured stretcher, he never even felt the motion.

^_~

Demeter & Ozma: Thank you! Last chapter was my angst&guilt piece (this chapter and the next one are the scary parts). You've pretty much echoed my analysis of the Slytherin students—they really get a raw deal, labeled as the "Voldemort Youth" at age eleven just because of one word said by a talking hat. Gryffindors, as Polaris illustrates, can be horrible too (though she does have a couple of non-psychotic moments coming up). Draco and Snape get more screen time in the next chapter (and more difficult choices to make).

Nabz, Kalen, redlion, chochang913: Sorry this chapter took so long; I spent Spring Break at a friend's house away from my computer and Microsoft word, and couldn't do any work until I got back.

Nicky, rupert grint or ron weasley, Luna Rose, The Pet: Thank you! I'm glad people are enjoying reading this as much as I am writing it. 

Guess: I'm not really sure what the silver nitrate would do (neither is Sirius, probably—he just thought it would make a good threat).

Kit Cloudkicker: Yep, Snape was the Slytherin sixth-year (someone figured it out, yea! I was worried I'd been too subtle). Read "Prophet of Doom" for the full backstory.

Taracollowen: Thanks for recommending the anti-Fudge fic, it was wonderfully snarky. "No matter how many times you read the 4th book, Fudge is still wrong in it." *snicker *

Giesbrecht: You like Sinistra? Yea! I was worrying that she'd slide into Mary-Sue territory (they say that characters you hook up with your favorite canon guy are high risk that way). More Draco in the next chapter!

Faith Accompli, Tiger Lily, and Alla: I'm glad you liked the Caius/Fred & George scene—I'd been looking for a chance to put in some interactions between Caius and the students for a while (and I needed another cute Caius/Severus moment).

Leila C. Snape & Andromache Cassandra: I know where y'all are coming from. My favorit characters are Lupin, Snape, and Black, and it's hard to find a fic staring them that's not slash (not that I mind slash—I do like some of it—but I feel kind of weird writing it).

^_~

Next up, Chapter Nine: _In Which Voldemort Displaces his Anger._

See the Dark Lord throw a temper tantrum! See Snape do Something Stupid! Watch Avery have fun with brass knuckles! Hear the tortured screams!

* Will be rated R for language and character torture, and because Avery is more twisted than a corkscrew. *


	9. In Which Voldemort Displaces his Anger.

Disclaimer: Characters and situations all belong to JK Rowlings, not me.  Caius the raven belongs to Draqonelle, who has kindly allowed me to borrow him (Vesta McGonagall is hers too).  She also owns Caligula Snape, "Moody's Angels," and McGonagall and Trelawney's patronuses.  In addition, I got the name Polaris Black for Sirius's sister from someone else's fanfic, but I can't remember whose (her character, however, belongs entirely to me and Draqonelle).

Posted by:  Elspeth (also known as L Squared)

Ships:  Professor Sinistra and an adorable black dog, hopefully hints at a future Snape/McGonagall

**Warning: This chapter is rated R for language and character torture**

Chapter Nine:  _In Which Voldemort Displaces his Anger._

            Draco Malfoy was standing in front of the door to the Slytherin common room, wand out and feet braced, when the all clear sounded.  The majority of the population of Slytherin House sat motionless in the room in front of him, most of them completely cowed.  "Keep everyone inside the dungeons," Snape had told him before leaving with the seventh-years to defend the Great Hall.  "I don't want anyone racing to the scene of battle like some overly heroic Gryffindor."

            As the magical chimes that declared the end of crisis and threat rang liltingly through the room, Draco let his wand arm relax and the tension ease out of his spine.  The attack had failed.  He didn't know whether to be disappointed or relieved.

            Tybalt Montague, lounging in a chair by the fireplace, stretched and cocked an eyebrow.  "Done showing off, Malfoy?" the sixth-year asked.  

            "I can see _someone's_ jealous that he didn't make prefect," Draco drawled, as he tucked his wand back into his belt.  "Everyone stay here," he ordered.  "I'm going down up to see what's going on.  Crabbe, Goyle," the two larger boys moved away from their positions on either side of the doorway, "come with me."

            As the door to the common room closed behind them, Draco could hear Millicent Bulstrode's voice.  "He wouldn't have done it.  He was bluffing.  He wouldn't really have done it."

            "I didn't see you trying to leave."  

            Millicent's reply, if there was one, was blocked out as the heavy stone door slid seamlessly back into place.

            Upstairs, the Great Hall was in an uproar.  The seventh-year students were clustered around a pale but triumphant Harry Potter, talking excitedly and slapping him on the back.

            "That was abso-bloody-lutely brilliant!"  one of the Weasley twins was saying.  "I can't believe you managed to call up a patronus like that.  It's even better than the one you conjured at that quidditch match the other year!"

            "And to think Professor Trelawney's patronus was an emperor penguin," Angelina Johnson said wonderingly.  "Who would possibly have imagined it?"

            Crabbe and Goyle at his back, Draco made his way gradually toward the cluster of teachers gathered near the open door.  The victorious defenders of Hogwarts were returning, many of them noticeably the worse for wear.  Professor Flitwick was grey faced and looked even older than usual, Madame Hooch was limping, and Hagrid's knuckles were scraped and bloody.  McGonagall's dreadful tartan nightrobe was torn, and her hair, surprisingly long, was falling down around her shoulders.

            Dumbledore, Professor Lupin, and Auror Black were clustered around a stretcher on which an eighth teacher, one Draco didn't recognize, was lying motionless.  Maybe he was the Muggle Studies professor.  Professor Sinistra hung back behind them, biting nervously on one of her knuckles.

            "I will give you twenty-four hours to explain this, Headmaster," Auror Black said flatly, gazed fixed on the stretcher.  "Twenty-four.  And then I'm calling the Ministry."

            Draco had caught up with Snape and was about to ask him what was going on when a spear of fire lanced though his left arm.  All thoughts of the mysterious unknown teacher vanished.

            "Goyle, Crabbe," he gritted out from between clenched teeth, "go talk to the seventh-years and find out what happened.  I've got to go."

            As the two boys waded back into the crowd of students, Draco began edging toward the exit.  Professor Snape, lurking on the edge of the group of faculty members, began to do the same.  Unfortunately, Auror Black, preoccupied as she apparently was, still managed to notice his movement.

            "Where are you going, Severus?" she asked.  She reached out and clamped a hand down on Snape's left forearm.  "Stay and help us get things back under control.  I'd really like to find out how the dementors got around that barrier, wouldn't you?"

            Professor Snape's face had gone a sickly grayish white.  "Let go of me you bitch," he hissed, trying desperately to pull his arm out of her grasp.  Draco looked at the auror's fingers pressing hard into Snape's flesh and swallowed hard.  His own mark was burning as though the scarred skin had suddenly been transfigured into flame.  The Potions Master's arm must feel as though it had been dipped into molten lava.

            Auror Black looked down at her hand and suddenly seemed to realize that she was actually touching Snape.  She dropped his arm as though it had burned her, and wiped her hand off on her gold and black robes.  "I'm sorry," she said.  She didn't sound very sorry.  "I didn't realize…"

            "I'm sure," Snape sneered.  "Do I have your permission to step out for a bit, or would you like to manhandle me some more?"

            "Get out of here.  I have more important things to worry about."

            "Gladly."

            Draco was out the door the moment Snape started moving again, and within moments, the two of them were heading for the edge of the Hogwarts grounds.  As they walked—walked, not ran—away, Draco was sure he could feel that creepy auror woman's eyes following them.  She'd been so busy with Snape that she probably hadn't even noticed him, but something in her manner gave him the creeps.  _She knows_, a little voice inside him whispered.

^_~

            The rest of the Death Eaters were already assembled by the time Draco and Professor Snape apparated to the meeting point.  Draco's eyes went immediately to his father, and something inside him unclenched when he saw Lucius Malfoy standing to the Dark Lord's right.  His silver-blonde hair was abnormally mussed-up, but he was evidently unharmed.  Others had not been so lucky.

            Crabbe was nursing a bloody, mangled right arm against his chest, and Goyle looked as if someone, probably Hagrid, had used him for quiditch practice—as a bludger.  They, however, were still upright and alive.  Nott, who lay in an undignified sprawl on the outskirts of the Circle, was quite obviously and gruesomely dead, the better part of his throat torn complete away.  Draco swallowed, resolving never to go near Fang again if he could possibly help it.  Mrs. Lestrange, more wild looking than ever, was weeping hysterically over the still body of her husband, who was significantly less mangled than Nott, but every bit as deceased.

            "Fifty dementorss," Voldemort was saying angrily.  "Fifty dementorss, and you barely even caused any damage.  I am displeased."

            "My lord, we were betrayed," Macnair said.  "They knew we were coming.  They had defences planned, an auror waiting for us."

            Voldemort's eyes flamed red and his slit-like nostrils flared.  "Excusess. One auror should not have been able to stop you.  None of you are worthy servants.  The only two who were truly loyal to me have been losst."  His gaze swept over the assembled Death Eaters.  "Which of you revealed our ssecrets?  You were not to tell anyone of our plans.  Luciuss?"

            "Great Lord, I told no one, not even Narcissa."  Lucius looked distinctly uneasy.  "I would never betray our secrets."

            The other Death Eaters were quick to add their protestations of innocence.

            "I spoke of it to no one, Master."

            "My Lord, I would die before betraying you."

            "Ahh, such loyalty.  Where was your devotion when you thought me defeated?  All of you were quick to abandon me then."

            "We would never abandon you, Lord," Avery swore fervently.  "It was not I who let our plans slip.  It could not have been me. I know no one at Hogwarts."

            All heads immediately swiveled towards Draco and Professor Snape.

            "Draco knows better than to let his tongue run loose," Lucius protested.  "And Severus would never be so foolish."

            "Let your son speak for himself, Luciuss."  Voldemort turned his firey gaze on Draco.  "You were told to keep our plans secret.  To speak of them to no one.  Not your friends, not your Housemates, not even your mother.  I would be very…disappointed…if I thought that you had disobeyed me.  Did you speak of this to anyone?"

            Draco's insides turned to ice.  He had kept every facet of his Death Eater activities secret from the other Slytherins, even from Pansy.  But he had told Crabbe and Goyle about them.  He had left the details out, but he had told them.  Vincent and Greg went with him everywhere; he could not have kept sneaking out of the school without one of them eventually becoming suspicious.  It had seemed a safe security risk.  The two of them were completely loyal to him, and as the sons of Death Eaters, understood the need for secrecy.  And frankly, he had always assumed that they were not bright enough to be a serious threat.  But what if _they_ had told someone about the invasion plans?  Not on purpose, but just bragging, by accident.  The failed attack might be his fault.  Draco felt sick with guilt and terror.

            "Answer me!  Did you speak of thiss to anyone?"  Voldemort raised his wand threateningly.

            "C-crabbe and Goyle.  I told Crabbe and Goyle.  But it couldn't have been them, Great Lord.  They are loyal to you; they would never reveal your secrets."

            "_Crucio_."

            As the last syllable dropped from Voldemort's lips, Draco's body instantly became afire with pain.  His nerves were white hot metal, his blood molten lava.  He was burning, burning down to his bones, to a skeleton composed of jagged glass.  Every muscle in his body was being ripped apart, shredded into individual fibers, each a separate bonfire of suffering.  He could hear someone screaming.  He felt someone's foot—Wormtail's?—slam into his side.

            "Thiss is what happens to thosse who fail me, Malfoy."  Voldemort's voice rose above the screams, implacable.  Through a haze of blood-red agony, Draco could see his narrow, snake-like face, cold and empty of emotion.  Behind him, Lucius Malfoy stood, face twisted in agony.  Draco wanted to scream to his father for help, to beg him to make the torture stop, but he didn't dare.  Lucius was powerful, but not as powerful as Voldemort, and to get in the way of the Dark Lord's anger would mean death.

            "My Lord, stop!"

            The shout carried over Draco's screaming, harsh and desperate.  "It was not him!"

            Voldemort's head snapped around toward the source of the yell, and his wand hand dropped.  "_Finite Incantatum_."

            Blessedly, miraculously, the pain stopped.  Draco, collapsed in a huddled ball on the ground, lifted his head to see Professor Snape step forward from the ranks of Death Eaters, face dead white but determined.  "It could not have been him, Master.  He is right, Crabbe and Goyle's sons would never have spilled any secrets."

            "The leak wass someone at Hogwartss," the Dark Lord spat.  "If it wass not Draco Malfoy, it musst have been you!  Have you been disloyal once again?"

            "No, Master, never.  I must have let something slip by mistake.  It must have been that auror bitch; she's been suspicious of me for years.  She must have gotten wind of it somehow.  I swear, it was an acciden-"

            "_Crucio_."         

            Snape's body went rigid, beads of sweat springing out on his face.  His breath began coming in gasps.

            "It was—an accident—Master… An acc—i—dent… I am loyal—to you…I am not—a traitor."

            "Oh, I believe you.  I'm sure you wouldn't betray me on purposse.  You know what would happen to you if you did.  _Crucio_."

            Professor Snape collapsed to his knees, his entire body arching backwards, wracked with convulsions.  Draco felt himself shudder in sympathy, his own body still aching from the effects of Voldemort's curse.

            "I would never betray you, Master, never."

            "_Crucio_."

            And then the screaming started.  Draco felt sick, watching.  _My fault.  All my fault_.  It seemed wrong, somehow, to witness his teacher reduced to this state.  A terrible violation of privacy.  But he couldn't tear his eyes away from the scene unfolding in front of him.

            "Your loyalty has wavered before, Severuss," Voldemort hissed, his wand aimed steadily at the twitching body crumpled at his feet.  "I am willing to believe that thiss was merely an…unfortunate mistake.  But you will see to it that you never make such a mistake again.  _Finite Incantatum_."  Snape's body went limp, and the screaming died mercifully away.  "Avery, Macnair," Voldemort beckoned to the two Death Eaters.  "Perhapss you would be sso kind as to deliver a more…lingering…messsage."

            "Yes, Master."  Avery's face held an oddly avid look as he and Macnair hauled Snape roughly to his feet.  "With pleasure."

            "I know your idea of pleasure, Avery," Snape choked out.  "I'd prefer not to experience it."

            "The dark Lord's word is our command, Snape," Avery smirked.  "He said to deliver a message, so 'message' it is."  The moment he completed the sentence, his fist went smashing into Snape's face.

            Professor Snape sagged, held upright only by Macnair's vise grip on his upper arms.  Avery drew his arm back a second time and slammed a brutal looking punch into Snape's stomach.  Draco stood staring silently, not daring to move or protest, lest he draws Voldemort's attention back to himself again.  The dull, repeptetive thud of flesh striking flesh seemed to reach his ears from across a great distance.

            _So that's why Avery wears all those big signet rings_, a detached little voice inside Draco head commented calmly.  _Just like muggle brass knuckles, really_.

            Snape was hanging totally limp in Macnair's grasp now, blood running down his chin and seeping from the numerous cuts inflicted by Avery's jewelry.  Avery lifted his hands and regarded them for a moment, inspecting the red that glistened on them, some of it from his own scraped knuckles, but most of it from Snape.  With an odd, hungry glint in his eyes he lifted one hand to his mouth and began licked the blood off his fingers.

            _I will not be sick.  I will not be sick. _

            "Please… keep your tongue—in your—mouth where… it belongs, Avery," Snape managed to mumble.  "I don't… even want… to think—about… where it's been."

            Avery's smile grew, if anything, more predatory.  Slowly and deliberately, he repeated the process with his other hand.

            Oh for Gods sake, Avery," Lucius Malfoy's aristocratic voice dripped disgust.  "We don't have time to stand around all night watching you indulge your little perversions.  Stop pretending to be a damned vampire and get on with it!  You can get your kicks with some muggle later."

            Avery glared angrily at Lucius and then proceeded to "get on with it" with a vengeance, launching into one of the most brutal and systematic beatings Draco had ever seen—not that he'd seen many.  Throughout it all, Macnair kept his grip on Professor Snape's arms, his face a study in boredom.  Eventually, he released his hold, dropping Snape to the ground and stepping back to allow Avery to go to work with his feet.  Snape was not making any noise anymore.  He wasn't reacting to the kicks either.

            "Perhaps you should tell Avery to stop now, my Lord," Lucius ventured with an air of indifference.  "If he gets carried away and kills him, who is going to brew poison for us?"

            "Avery, you may ceasse."  Voldemort bent down over the prone figure of Snape and tangled his fingers in the long black hair, yanking the man's head up to look into his face.  "I think our alchemist has learned his lesson."

            "Yes, Master…"  The words were little more than a moan.

            "I do not think that he will be sso foolish as to fail me again.  The punishment iss complete."

            "Thank you, Master.  You are merciful…"

            Voldemort released his hold on Snape's hair, letting his head fall back to the ground.  He straightened.  "Thiss meeting is over," he announced.  "Let this be a warning to all of you.  The next time someone is foolish enough to fail me, they will receive much, much worsse."  The eerie, high-pitched voice was heavy with implied threat.  "You may go."  The Dark Lord turned and swept away into the blackness outside the Circle, pausing only once to beckon to Wormtail, the plump, balding little man that seemed to serve as a sort of personal manservant-slash-secretary for him.  Draco never saw them apparate, but he could feel it in his mark—and in his wrenched and aching bones—when his master's presence was gone.  Avery, obviously disappointed at having his fun curtailed, stepped back slightly from Snape, glowering mutinously.  Lucius stared at him pointedly.  Avery turned back and, slowly and deliberately, stamped his heel down on one of Snape's outflung hands, smiling slightly at the resultant _snap-crunch_ of bone.  He ground his heel down harder, than spun away and stomped out into the darkness, disappearing with an audible pop.  The other Death Eaters gradually followed suit, none of them looking at Professor Snape's crumpled form.  Eventually, Draco and his father were the only ones left.

            Draco, still half lying where Voldemort's curse and Wormtail's—at least, he was pretty sure it had been Wormtail's—kick had felled him, began to struggle to his feet.  His father was instantly next to him, giving him a hand up.

            "Are you alright?"  Lucius Malfoy's voice was hard, but Draco could hear the concern underneath it.

            "Yes," he lied, trying to stand straight and ignore the vicious aches throughout his body and stabbing pains in his side.  It was worse than the time he had fallen off his broom at fifty feet during a quiditch match because the Weasley twins had hit him with two bludgers at once.  "I'm fine, father."

            Lucius looked skeptical, but accepted the answer.  "Never disobey Lord Voldemort again," he ordered, voice low.  "The Dark Lord is very dangerous when he's angry."  Grey eyes as pale as Draco's own bored into him.  "Do you hear me, Draco Malfoy?  Malfoys do not fail in their duty.  Malfoys do not make stupid mistakes.  And I am not going to explain to your mother how I was forced to watch while the dark Lord killed you for costing him the war."

            Draco nodded mutely.

            Lucius inspected him a moment longer, then strode over to where Professor Snape's limp body lay sprawled on the ground and pointed his wand.  "Ennervate."

            Snape twitched slightly and groaned as Lucius took him by the shoulders and turned him face up.  

            "You idiot.  You should have been sorted into Gryffindor."

            Unfocused black eyes stared at Lucius dazedly, not tracking his movements.

            Lucius said a word that he would most certainly not have repeated in front of Narcissa.

            "How many fingers am I holding up?"

            Professor Snape blinked, his eyes coming slowly back into focus.  His face was dead white, and he was cradling his left hand against his chest.  "Three," he whispered hoarsely.

            "Good.  I want to make sure that you understand what I'm about to say.  It's not that I don't appreciate what you did, it's just that it was the most blatantly un-Slytherin piece of ill-thought-out recklessness I've seen recently.  Let Draco face to consequences of his own mistakes. All you succeeded in doing was shifting suspicion onto yourself, and you're on shaky enough ground as it is.  It's fortunate that Voldemort was still pleased over your handling of the school's protective barriers, or we would be minus one poison maker."

            Snape closed his eyes again.  "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

            "You're playing a dangerous game, Severus, spying in the enemy camp.  I would hate to have to be the one to snap your wand in half and put the coins on your eyelids after you make one wrong move too many.  We need your information."  Lucius's face was expressionless, voice calm and matter-of-fact.  He pulled professor Snape to his feet, far less roughly than Macnair had done, but not as quite carefully as he had helped Draco.  Snape managed to stand—largely—on his own two feet, but it didn't look like he was going to stay on them long.

            "I'd like to know how you plan on getting back to Hogwarts," Lucius said.

            Draco jumped in.  "I can apparate with more than one person.  I've been practicing with Crabbe and Goyle in Hogsmead."

            "Good."  Lucius nodded at Draco.  "Do that, then."

            "I am perfectly capable of apparating on my own."

            Lucius ignored the remark as only a Malfoy could.  People with concussions, as all three of them knew perfectly well, tended to splinch themselves.

            Bowing to the inevitable, Snape watched as Draco drew his wand, then placed his good hand on the boy's shoulder.  It shook slightly.  He didn't complain any further either, which didn't seem right, somehow.  The whole situation felt wrong.  Adults weren't supposed to rely on him for help, especially not ones like Snape and Lucius.

            Draco took a deep breath, fixing his mind on the prospect of a long, hot soak in the prefects' bathroom, and the pain potions Professor Snape doubtless had somewhere in his office, and disapparated. 

^_~

Yes!  Whoohoo!  The reviews have broken 100!  Thank you, thank you, thank you to everybody who reviewed!  

Alla, Giesbrecht, & Nicky:  Reasonable is not really a part of Pols's vocabulary, but yes, there is some brother-sister interaction coming up (and I promise, she won't call Fudge).

Ozma:  Thank you!  I wish I could take credit for the Moody's Angels bit, but a friend of mine made it up (she's actually working on a long fic involving them right now).  I feel sorry for poor Sirius too—the man's had nothing but a series of rotten breaks—and for Remus, who's sort of stuck in the position of  being the only emotionally stable one out of the previous Hogwarts generation.

Firebrand:  I'm on your favorites list?  Yea! *dances in glee *.  Hopefully this chapter answers your whether-or-not-to-pity-Draco dilemma (if it doesn't, next one probably will).

Faith Accompli:  Sorry; this chapter turned out to be something of a cliffhanger as well (resolution is coming, I promise).  Glad to hear that Sinistra is not Mary-Sueish.  As to your prediction about Snape—very, very on target (even as regards vocabulary—God knows what Avery would have done without Voldemort and Lucius holding his leash *shudder * ).

Erin, Leila C. Snape, chochang913:  Thank you!

Kit Cloudkicker, Child of Two Worlds, RADKA:  Don't worry, Pols is up for a bit of a paradigm shift in the next chapter.  I think her definition of  "criminal scum" is about to undergo a small revision.

Chary:  All eight chapters in one go?  Wow, I'd have a headache too.  I promise another dose of Caius in the next chapter (his dialogue is so much fun to write ^_^).  If you want more of him, read Draqonelle's "PMS"—that's where I snagged him from in the first place.

Luna Rose & raine dragon:  Thank you!  Such a great ego boost to see people that eager for more of my writing (if only my Creative Writing professor were that enthusiastic).  The next chapter should be up more quickly now that my midterms are over.

Demeter:  You hate Polaris?  Yea! That's exactly the reaction I was hoping for (and your analysis of her was pretty good, by the way).

Sarah-Dunleavy:  Thank you!  I'd been planning out the dialogue for that Snape-Polaris scene for a while.  The ease with which such lines are beginning to occur to me is starting to disturb me.  It's as though both of our grandmothers are coming out of my mouth at once (but exponentially more vicious).  Love you! (and by the way, I've got more Isle of the Apples as well—e-mail to come soon).

^_~

Chapter Ten:  _In Which There is Much Patching Up and Tending of Wounds._

            Everybody who is anybody at Hogwarts can be found at the Hogwarts Infirmary.  Yes, the Hogwarts Infirmary, the answer to all your physical/emotional/psychological problems.

*Rating will be returning to PG-13 *


	10. In Which There in Much Patching Up and T...

Disclaimer: Characters and situations all belong to JK Rowlings, not me.  Caius the raven belongs to Draqonelle, who has kindly allowed me to borrow him (Vesta McGonagall is hers too).  She also owns the Remus-in-the-closet incident, Caligula Snape, and young Sirius's boggart.  In addition, I got the name Polaris Black for Sirius's sister from someone else's fanfic, but I can't remember whose (her character, however, belongs entirely to me and Draqonelle).  The graphic description of what it feels like to pass out is courtesy of the Red Cross Blood Drive, who came to my campus this spring (tip: when they offer you juice after giving blood, drink it, even if you don't like the kind of juice.  Fainting heads the list as the most embarrassing way possible to get out of English Class).

Posted by:  Elspeth (also known as L Squared)

Ships:  Professor Sinistra and an adorable black dog, hopefully hints at a future Snape/McGonagall

Chapter Ten:  _In Which There is Much Patching Up and Tending of Wounds._

            Draco felt reality give a slow, wrenching lurch around him as he apparated into the delightfully familiar confines of the Forbidden Forest.  The looming, monster-infested trees now seemed a haven of safety.  Nothing here could possibly be as dangerous as Voldemort.

            The massive black trunks surrounding him solidified, and Draco sagged exhaustedly against the rough, moss covered bark of the one nearest to him.  Apparating was a difficult and taxing spell at the best of times, and performing it when exhausted and in pain—not to mention with a passenger who possessed half again as much mass as he did—was even more difficult.  He and Professor Snape had come closer to being splinched than Draco ever planned to admit.

            Snape himself was now leaning heavily against another of the trees, face so pale that Draco suspected that the big oak was the only thing keeping him upright.  After a moment, he straightened, almost visibly bracing himself, and moved away from the tree.

            "Good job, Mr. Malfoy," he managed, voice hoarse and faint but still commanding.  "Now come on, we have to get back to the castle."  

            Easier said than done.  Much, much easier said than done.  The distance from the castle itself to the line of demicartion in the Forbidden Forest where the anti-apparition barriers ran out was only a half-mile.  On a good day, Draco could run it in less than four minutes (and had, in the past, as part of his quidditch training).  Tonight it took him and Professor Snape a good twenty minutes to make the trek across the grounds, twenty very long minutes, during which Draco was sure that his teacher was going to keel over any second.

            At some point in the past two hours, the Great Hall had been cleared out and the students presumably sent back to their common rooms, leaving a blessedly empty set of corridors for the two of them to limp through.  Draco could have sworn he could hear the pictures whispering to each other as they passed by them.

            They paused for several minutes at the bottom of the stairs to the dungeons, before Professor Snape released his white-knuckled grip on the stair-rail and he and Draco made it the last few hundred yards to his office.

            When Draco pushed open the office door—usually locked unless you were a Slytherin or had been invited in—a streak of black feathers shot past him like a muggle bullet and launched itself at Professor Snape, shrieking.

            "Sev-ah-rus!  Sev-ah-rus!  Snake Snake Snake!  Ten points from Sly-ther-in!"

            "Caius, please be quiet.  It's okay."  Snape attempted to detach his frantic familiar from the shoulder of his robes, finally succeeding in getting the raven to at least remain still and silent, though not managing to remove him.  

            Once Caius had been dealt with, Snape limped across the room to his desk and half sat, half fell into the wooden chair behind it.  For a moment, he leaned an elbow on the desk and rested his head in his unhurt right hand.  Then he raised his head again and looked at Draco.

            "Come here, Mr. Malfoy.  You cannot go back to your common room looking like that."

            Draco crossed over to stand before the front of the massive wooden desk, the same spot, he remember suddenly, that he had stood in that night in January, before his Death Eater induction.  He stood silently while Snape looked him over, knowing what the potions master must be seeing.  The drying mud in his face and hair, the swollen and bleeding lower lip that he had bitten straight through while under the cruciatus curse, the pain in his side—he could feel a bruise starting and was sure a rib must be cracked—that prevented him from standing completely straight, all would be dead give-aways that he had been outside of the castle that night.

            Sighing, Professor Snape withdrew his wand from inside his right sleeve and pointed it at Draco's face, then touched it to his lower lip.  "_Ablutio_, _integro labrum_."

            Draco felt the mud peeling away from his face and the swelling and pain in his lip disappearing.  Snape sagged back in the chair, looking, if possible, even paler than before.

            "You didn't have to do that," Draco protested, uncharacteristically alarmed at the slightly glassy look in his teacher's eyes.  Adults weren't _supposed_ to get sick or hurt, they were supposed to be invincible—at least, Lucius and Professor Snape were.

            "It will prevent any…awkward questions."   Snape waved his right hand tiredly at a row of three vials lined up at the edge of his desk.  His left hand was still out of sight below the desk.  Draco could vividly remember the crunching sound he had heard when Avery had stepped on it, and was sure something must be broken.

            "I want you to drink these."

            "What are they?"  Draco picked up the largest of the vials first, inspecting the liquid inside.

            "That one… is reverse engineered Skele-Gro.  I suggest you drink the white one first.  It's a pain potion.  The blue one is a sleeping potion, for when you get back to your room."  Snape fininished his explanation, then closed his eyes and leaned his head on his hand again.

            Draco set down the pseudo-Skele-gro, picking up the pain potion and cracking the seal.  It was thick and chalky, and tasted bitter, but the moment he swallowed it he could feel the aches in his muscles and bones diminish.  He tucked the Skele-Gro and sleeping potion into a pocket of his robes.  "Thank you, sir." 

            Professor Snape seemed to sense that he was referring to more than just the cleaning up and the potions.  "Don't thank me.  I'm your Head of House.  I stand _in_ _loco parentis_ for you during the school year; I'm supposed to take care of you."

            "Thank you anyway.  Do you need any—"

            Snape cut him off.  "I am fine, Mr. Malfoy.  Go back to your dormitory and take care of the other Slytherins before it turns into a bedlam in there, if it hasn't already.  I don't need any help."

            "Help," Caius repeated.  "Draco.  Help."  He pulled his beak out of Professor Snape's hair, which he was preening obsessively, and cast his beady black eyes at Draco in a meaningful stare.  Draco nodded back ever so slightly before leaving the office.  Great Ravens truly were astonishingly smart birds.

            Once the door had swung shut behind him, Draco paused indecisively in the corridor.  Caius had asked—or at least, he thought Caius had asked—for him to bring help.  But who could he go to?  The hospital wing was out of the question.  The first thing Madame Pomfrey would do would be to look at Professor Snape's left hand, and wrist, and forearm, after which point none of his injuries would matter, because he'd be spending the rest of his life in Azkaban, with Draco for company.  Most of the other teachers could be ruled out for similar reasons.  Who in the school could be relied upon to provide assistance without asking awkward questions?  Suddenly, inspiration struck.  Professor Lupin.  He _needed_ Professor Snape to stay at Hogwarts and make the wolfsbane potion for him, otherwise he himself would be forced to leave.  Under those circumstances, Draco imagined, he wouldn't be too eager to ask many difficult questions.  And if he did, well, he was a werewolf, a dark creature, and everyone knew a werewolf's voice was worth next to nothing in a court of law.  People would far less likely to listen to Lupin's suspicions than to those of, say, Professor McGonagall.

            Even as the idea passed through Draco's mind, he was turning back toward the stairs out of the dungeon.  The quarters for those teachers who were not heads of houses, he remembered with an inward groan, were all on the fifth floor.

            By some stroke of luck, Professor Lupin turned out not to be in his inconveniently far away quarters.  As Draco began labourously climbing the staircase between the first and second floors, he ran into the Dark Arts professor coming down in the opposite direction.

            "Draco?" Lupin asked, sounding curious but vaguely disapproving.  "What are you doing up here?"

            "Looking for you, sir."  Always be polite when you want something, Draco reminded himself.  It makes people more likely to give it to you.

            "Can't it wait until tomorrow morning?  It's nearly four A.M."

            "Er, no, no it can't."  Draco took a deep breath.  "I think you should go and check on Professor Snape.  Sir.  He looked kind of tired earlier.  And he hasn't come to explain anything to our house yet."  That was good, establish that he had been in the Slytherin dormitory where he was supposed to be and not out of the castle.  Fortunately, Hogwarts robes were black, so the mud and grass stains didn't show.  Much.  Well, at least the stairway was dimly lit.

            Lupin looked thoughtful.  "He hasn't been back to the dungeons?  He left the Great Hall a good two hours ago."

            "I didn't say he hadn't been back to the dungeons, just not back to our dormitory.  We're worried about him."  Draco tried to look concerned and mournful, hoping to play for sympathy.  Lupin was notoriously soft-hearted.  "Maybe you should go check his office.  Sir."

            Professor Lupin looked slightly surprised at Draco's admission of worry, but quickly relented.  "Alright, I'll go and check Severus's office," he said.  "You, Draco, need to go back to your dormitory.  I'll walk you downstairs."

            Lupin took Draco by the elbow and steered him down the steps back to the first floor, and then down the second, longer set of stairs into the dungeons.  As he followed in the DaDA teacher's wake, Draco was very glad of the pain potion he had taken earlier.  Without it, his limping and stiff movements would have been far too obvious for Professor Lupin to miss.

            At the bottom of the final flight of stairs, Lupin turned toward the Potions classroom, and Snape's office and quarters.  Draco hung back in the hallway, watching him.

            "Draco, go to bed.  I promise, I will check on Professor Snape for you.  You and the other Slytherins can find out all about what happened this evening at breakfast.  I can assure you, the castle is perfectly safe.  Now Go. To.  Bed."

            Sensing that Lupin was about to lose patience, Draco quickly turned and started towards the stretch of wall that contained the entrance to the Serpents' Lair—a much more stylish name than Eagles' Eyrie, Lions' Den, or, God forbid, Badgers' Burrow.  Bed was beginning to sound very, very good.

            "_Carpe diem_," he mumbled tiredly at the damp stone, stepping back to wait while the hidden door ground slowly open.  But when he stepped through the entrance into the common room, his hopes of finally retreating to bed to take his Skele-Gro and sleeping potion were dashed.  There, waiting for him in the armchairs in front of the fire, were Crabbe, Goyle, and Gordon Nott.

            "Malfoy," Nott greeted him, rising to his feet.  "Just the wizard we were waiting for."  Draco felt a sudden sinking in his stomach.  _Oh no, oh no, I don't want to have to do this._

            "Crabbe and Goyle here want to know if their dads are okay, and I want to hear about my uncle.  We know that you know, so come on, spill."

            For an instant, Draco could once again see the older Nott's mangled body, throat laid open like so much raw meat.

            "What?  What is it?"  Goyle demanded, seeing the look on Draco's face.  "They're okay, aren't they?"

^_~

            As soon as the door swung shut behind Draco's departing form, Snape laid his right arm across his desk and sagged forward to rest his head on his forearm.  His left hand he kept in his lap, trying to ignore the dull throbs of pain that pulsed through it in time to his heartbeat.  Everything hurt, his muscles, his bones, his head…  He could feel sharp, stabbing pains in his midsection where Avery had kicked him, and his thought process felt oddly blurry.  He had set out potions earlier in the evening to deal with the expected result of Voldemort's wrath, but he had given them to Draco.  There were more in the cupboards on the other side of his office, but they seemed unimaginably far away.  Besides, he wasn't sure he'd be able to pour out the proper doses anyway.  He really should go and report to Dumbledore.  The Headmaster would want to know about Lestrange and Nott's deaths.  Maybe in a few minutes.

            Nott…he had always rather liked Nott.  The man had been much more intelligent than Crabbe and Goyle, who were really little more than a pair of thugs, and not nearly as fanatical and obsessive as Lestrange.  Nott…He had been alive, and now he was not.  _You're rambling_, a little voice in the back of his head remarked sharply.  _Probably going into shock_.  Somehow, he could not bring himself to care.

            A few moments later—or was it longer, he couldn't be sure—Caius cocked his head towards the doorway, listening to a series of muffled sounds that drifted in from the hall.

            "Severus," Lupin's voice penetrated unmistakably through the thick wooden door, hesitant and concerned.  "Are you in there?"

            Snape didn't respond.  Maybe, if he stayed very still and kept his eyes closed, the werewolf would go away.

            "Severus?"  The voice was more insistent now, definitely worried sounding.  Snape considered snarling at Lupin to leave him alone, but couldn't work up the energy.  A moment later, Caius decided to take the matter into his own talons, denying Snape the opportunity.

            "Wolf," he croaked, voice uncannily loud for so small a bird.  "Wolf wolf.  Sev-ah-rus.  In in in!"

            Why, Snape wondered fuzzily as he heard the familiar sound of the door creaking open, had he ever decided to get a familiar that could talk?

            "Severus, are you alright?"

            "Go away, Lupin," he managed to mumble.  "I don't care what you want, you can get it tomorrow."

            "I don't want anything."  Lupin's voice got closer.  His head still resting on his arm, Snape heard the werewolf's soft tread moving across the flagstones.  

            "Then why are you here?'

            "Actually, Draco Malfoy sent me to check on you," Lupin said, sounding slightly bemused at the notion.  "Considering that it was the first time I had ever seen him display an iota of concern for another human being, I assumed you must be in pretty bad shape."

            "I'm fine."

            "Like Hell.  I can tell there's something wrong with you.  I'm a werewolf, remember?  I can smell pain.  Look at me, Severus."

            With an effort, Snape raised his head and looked at Lupin.  His left eye was beginning to swell shut, and the werewolf's image was somewhat blurry.

            Lupin drew his breath in sharply at the sight of Snape's face.  "Merlin's beard!  What happened to you?"  He leaned forward and peered closely at the swollen and bruised flesh.  "Is your entire body like this?"

            "Voldemort does not like losing.  He decided to express his displeasure."

            "Did he curse you?  He cursed you, didn't he?  What are you doing down here?  You should be in the hospital wing."

            Snape shook his head, ignoring the flashes of pain the motion brought.  "No, I can't go there yet.  I need to report to the Headmaster first."

            "I've just come from his office; he's still explaining things to Polaris.  There will be plenty of time for you to go see Poppy before he gets done with her."  Lupin was insistent.

            "Leave off, Lupin."  Snape gritted his teeth and pushed himself upright, leaning on his desk.  "I will go see her in my own good time."

            "Fine, fine.  If you insist on seeing Dumbledore first, we'll go see him first."  Lupin took hold of Snape's upper arm and began to guide him out the door and towards the stairway.  Snape bit back a hiss of pain as the werewolf's fingers pressed into the bruises left by Macnair's hands.  He kept his left hand firmly cradled against his chest, resisting Lupin's attempts to pull it free and look at it.

            Patches of purple and yellow fuzz began to cloud the edges of Snape's vision, and there was an odd, ringing noise in his ears as he began to mount the steps of the first flight of stairs leading up out of the dungeon.  His face and ears tingled, and the rest of his body was ice cold.  With no noticeable lapse of time in between, he suddenly found himself lying flat on the floor at the base of the staircase, with Lupin bending over him in obvious concern.

            "What happened?" he asked, much more faintly than he had intended to.  It shouldn't have been so hard to talk.

            "You passed out."  Lupin pushed him gently but firmly back down as he tried to sit up.  It wasn't difficult.  Moving brought the purple fuzz back.

            "Let me up.  I'm fine.  I need to go report to Dumbledore…"

            "People who are "fine" do not lie unconscious on the floor," Lupin said sharply.  "I'm taking you to the hospital wing."

            Snape gave up.  Lupin was plainly determined, and he didn't feel up to the effort of arguing.  A bed in the hospital wing was beginning to seem awfully attractive, and maybe Poppy could do something about his hand…  Abruptly, he realized that Lupin had his wand out, obviously preparing to cast a mobilicorpus spell.

            "No levitating spells," he managed to snarl.  "I can walk."

            Lupin looked doubtful, but lowered his wand, tucking it away in his robes and carefully pulling Snape to his feet, slinging the other man's right arm over his shoulders.

            Walking turned out to be a bit more difficult than Snape had anticipated.  His knees didn't seem to want to work correctly, and he couldn't feel the floor under his feet.  _Just keep moving_, he told himself.  _You'll get there soon_.  All you have to do is keep walking.

^_~

            Remus made his way slowly up the stairs toward the first floor, Snape's weight an awkward burden on his left.  In a way, it was rather like coming home from pub-crawling with Sirius, back when they were young, though minus the off-key singing in his ear.  Both men were thin enough that bearing their weight was not completely impossible, but tall enough that he kept nearly tripping over their feet.  

            Caius had flown ahead of them and was now waiting at the top of the steps, fluffing his feathers impatiently and looking meaningfully from the two of them to the hospital wing door.

            Remus could hear a muted murmur of voices as he approached the door to the hospital wing, but all conversation ceased when he and Snape entered.  Ranged around the room, staring at the two of them in shocked silence, were Poppy Pomfrey, Minerva McGonagall, Xiomora Hooch, and, surrounding the bed where Sirius's unconscious form lay, Claire Sinistra, Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Polaris Black.

            "Oh God," Snape moaned in his ear.  "Why couldn't you just leave me in my office to die?"

            Poppy was the first to speak.  Almost visible shaking herself out of her frozen trance, she moved over to Snape's other side, taking some of his weight from Remus and steering the two of them toward the nearest bed.  She let out a sharp hiss when she saw his left hand, which Remus realized with a jolt was bruising nearly black, and had three fingers sticking out at odd angles.

            "What has the idiot done to himself _now_?"

            "S'not my fault this time," Snape mumbled, collapsing back onto the bed.

            "Snape, if there's one thing I've learned in the past twenty years, it's that it's always somehow your fault, no matter who's holding the knife."  Poppy's lips were pressed in a thin, angry line as she began to clean the blood off his face, examining the damage.  "I think you've fractured your left zygomatic."

            "What?"

            "Your face bone."  Poppy began probing his cheekbone with careful fingers, eliciting a hiss of pain.  A mummer of shocked voices from the crowd around Sirius's bed made her look up sharply.

            "Everyone who's not either injured or directly related to someone who is, leave," she ordered, glaring around indiscriminately.  "Out!  I can't work if it's too crowded to move!  Not you, Remus."

            Claire, Ron, and Hermione reluctantly left the room, casting anxious glances back over their shoulders the entire time, while Xiomora began limping unobtrusively toward the door.

            "Xiomora Rolanda Hooch!  I haven't looked at your ankle yet, so sit down and stay here until I can get to you."

            Xiomora resumed her seat.  Minerva, who hadn't made a single move towards the doorway, crossed her arms and glared at Poppy, as if daring the mediwitch to make her leave.  Caius, now perching on the headboard of the bed, eyed her with a remarkably similar expression.  Poppy glanced at them both, then chose to ignore them.

            "Snape, I'm going to have to cut your robes off.  I need to see what's wrong with your side."

            Snape eyed Polaris.  "I'm not taking my robes off in front of her."

            "Too bad."  Poppy pointed her wand at him and snapped out a cutting spell.  Bloodstained black robes slid apart, followed by an equally stained black linen shirt.  

            The bruises were really quite impressive.  In several places, Remus could actually see the outline of somebody's boot.  Behind him, he heard Minerva catch her breath.

            "What the hell happened to him?" Polaris asked sharply, leaving her chair by Sirius's bed and striding across the room.  She halted a good three feet away from Snape when Caius fluffed his feathers angrily and glared at her with blatant menace in his eyes.

            "Auror.  Auror," he spat.  Then he said a word that would have gotten any student detention for a month.

            Polaris's nostrils flared and her lips thinned, but she determinedly ignored the insult—though she didn't come any closer to the bed.  Great Ravens had been known to inflict some fairly gruesome damage on unwary wizards.  "He was fine three hours ago," she continued.

            "Voldemort happened," Remus told her absently.  Most of his attention was currently focused on subduing the desire to chase Voldemort and his Death Eaters down and rip them to shreds, one by one.  Death to all who invaded his territory and harmed his pack!  With a shock, he realized that the wolf had extended his definition of "pack" to cover nearly everyone in the room.  Not just Sirius, lying motionless in the other bed, so frighteningly pale, and Harry, who sat with his hand clamped around one of Sirius's, horrified eyes staring steadily across the room, but Xiomora and Minerva as well, and even Snape. "Apparently, he wasn't too pleased about the failure of the attack."  

            "He dug his own grave, then," Polaris sniffed, eyes going hard.  "It's like the IRA; once in, never out."  Her attention shifted to the pattern of livid bruises imprinted on Snape's upper body.  "Odd," she said meditatively.  "There's no bruising on his forearms, or right hand.  No marks at all, except…" her gaze shifted to the Dark Mark, a raw, half-healed burn scar, surrounded by a series of thin, white slashes.

            Snape shifted, trying to pull his arm in closer to his body, out of sight.  Poppy's gentle but firm grip on his left wrist prevented him.

            "It's true then," Polaris said.  "You have it and he doesn't."  She was speaking directly to Snape now, her voice curiously intent.  "You wear the Mark, and he doesn't have one.  I should have thought of that, back then.  I should have checked for it."

            "Go away…" Snape groaned, closing his eyes.  "Stop staring at me.  M'not a lab specimen…"

            "Keep them open, please," Poppy said.  "I want to check the size of your pupils."  She leaned in, inspecting his eyes closely.  "Hmm… You would have to have black eyes, wouldn't you?  I can't tell where the pupils end and the irises begin."

            "Are they s'possed to be different sizes like that?"  Xiomora Hooch was peering over Poppy's shoulder, head cocked in a very bird-like attitude of curiousity.

            "Go sit down, Xiomora.  You're blocking the light.  So are you, Auror Black."  Xiomora obeyed.  Polaris, somewhat predictably, did not.

            "They say that Pettigrew is alive.  That you've seen him," she said, eyes still fixed intently on Snape.  "Is it true?"

            "Of course he's alive."  Snape's voice, normally silky and sarcastic, was now merely hoarse and bitter.  "Cowards die a thousand times before their deaths, and he's only managed about eight hundred."

            "Definitely yes on the concussion."  Poppy nodded grimly to herself, carefully taking Snape's left hand in both of hers.  "Snape, I'm going to set your fingers now," she said gently.  "I'm fairly sure that you have a concussion, so I'm afraid I can't give you any pain potions..."

            "Get on with it."

            "One of you distract him," Poppy said to the crowd of onlookers.  "Not you, Auror Black.  I thought I told you to sit down.  And not you, either."  This last was to Minerva, whose face had been growing steadily angrier over the past few minutes, until her very hair seemed ready to bristle out of it's bun.

            Remus stepped forward, crouching down by the bed so that his eyes were on a level with Snape's.  "Don't look at her, look at me."  The fact that Snape actually obeyed the command was somewhat disquieting.  "You said you needed to report to Dumbledore, right?  Why don't you tell me everything right now, and I'll go and tell him later."

            "Report."  Snape closed his eyes again, flinching slightly as Poppy began to probe his mangled hand.

            "Definitely three phalanges," she was muttering, "and I think, yes, one, no, two metacarpals."

            "Report," Snape repeated.  "Yes, well, we lost, obviously.  The Dark Lord wasn't pleased.  Thought there was a traitor, someone at Hogwarts.  Convinced him it was me, but he thinks it was an accident."   He broke off with a strangled gasp as Poppy slowly charmed one of his fingers straight.  Minerva made a faint sound in her throat, and Caius cocked his head menacingly at Poppy, eyes glinting beadily.  Even Polaris looked a little pale.

            "Voldemort thinks it was an accident," Remus prompted.

            Black eyes fixed on his.  "An accident, yes.  We're not allowed to make mistakes, it's too expensive.  Too dangerous."  Poppy was getting ready to set the second finger, but now held her wand motionless, listening.  "Ripley Nott and Antoine Lestrange are dead.  Goyle's arm has been injured, might be able to get him on that."  He paused, then continued in a flat monotone.  "Nott and Lestrange are dead, did I say that?  Nott…his throat was gone, ripped out by something, some curse, I don't know.  Antoine…the killing curse.  I think Therezia's gone over the edge completely.  She and Lestrange have been together since fourth year.  They love each other as much as Potter and Evans, maybe more."

            Remus glanced involuntarily at Polaris, who was listening to Snape's account with a set, emotionless face.  At the mention of Lestrange's name, she didn't so much as twitch an eyebrow.

            "The Dark Lord wasn't pleased.  He doesn't like failure.  He wanted to make…make an example.  Mistakes can't be tolerated.  But it wasn't a mistake.  There really is a traitor..." Snape's voice trailed off again as Poppy set to work on another broken bone.

            "You can't possibly feel guilty about informing on that scum," Polaris said tightly.  "It's probably the only decent thing you've ever done."

            Remus stared at Polaris with something approaching shock.  _I can't believe she just said that.  No, wait, I can.  She has no mercy.  Absolutely no mercy._  Poppy gave her a particularly venomous version of her patented "don't disturb my patient" glare.

            "We can't all throw our friends and relations in prison without twitching an eyebrow."  Surprisingly, it was not a snarl.  He didn't even sound angry, just very tired.

            "I… I… Duty has to take precedence over feelings."  Polaris sounded abnormally defensive.  "You can't… Just because someone is related to you doesn't make them exempt from justice."  She turned away, looking back across the room at Sirius.  "We didn't know.  _I_ didn't know.  We all thought…"  She broke off abruptly and turned back to Snape, eyes glinting oddly.  "I don't have to defend myself to the likes of you."

            "No," Snape agreed, voice catching oddly as Poppy began working on the last finger.  "You don't."

            "Auror Black," Poppy began, voice heavy with warning.  Polaris could take a hint, though in Remus's experience she normally chose not to.  She fell silent and backed off a bit to where Minerva stood against the wall.  The transfiguration teacher glared pointedly at her and took a step away.  Xiomora, unusually silent, was regarding Polaris with a kind of horrified awe.  Surely, Remus could almost see her thinking, Caius would attack the auror any minute now.

            "Okay, that's the last finger."  Poppy had resumed her brisk, businesslike "bedside" voice.  "I'm going to start on your palm now.  We're almost done, I promise."

            "Oh, _God_…"  Snape went, if possible, even paler, and sagged back against the pillow, eyes losing focus.

            "Snape?  Snape!  Don't you dare pass out, do you hear me?"  

            "'course I hear.  You're yelling."

            "Yes, I know," Poppy apologized.  "I'm sorry.  But you can't go to sleep yet, not for a few hours.  It's important."  She tapped her wand lightly against the back of Snape's hand a final time, then pulled it away.  "There.  All finished.  Be glad you're not in a muggle hospital; they would have had to piece your metacarpals back together with steel screws."

            "Steel screws?"  Xiomora said faintly.  Harry, across the room, looked sick—probably thinking of his own Lockhart-induced hand injury in second year.

            Snape didn't respond, merely eyed the beaker of Skele-Grow Poppy was now preparing with obvious trepidation.

            "You can wait until morning when the concussion has started to wear off, if you would like," she offered.  "I can give you pain potions then.  Or, you can take it now and your bones will be mostly knit by then."

            "Now."

            "Fine, then."  Poppy stood over Snape while he drank the potion, then took the empty beaker and placed it on the table by the bed.  "Lupin," she ordered, "take the blanket off that empty bed and bring it here.  Thank you."  She spread the blanket over Snape and proceeded to charm it in place with the sort of tight corners that would leave the person under it totally unable to move.  "Now, I want you to go sit down by your friend and have some hot chocolate.  I _know _you haven't had any yet.  Black's going to be alright, by the way.  Shock and bloodloss, but we've got him warmed up again and seen to the slice on his back.  Once he wakes up, and we give him some hot chocolate and pepperup potion, he should be fine.  Except for the vitamin deficiency."  She broke off to direct a glare at Snape.  "Make that two cases of vitamin deficiency.  Food is not something that exists only for other people, you know."

            "_She's_ there at dinner…glaring.  Like I'd poisoned her... her food.  As if I'd be that obvious."

            "I don't glare," Polaris stated absently, turning to face Poppy.  "Are you sure?  You're sure he's alright?"

            "Physically, yes," Poppy told her, as she fetched a mug of hot chocolate that had been waiting on a table in the corner and handed it to Remus.  "I've been keeping it hot for you.  Drink it, Lupin.  Now."  She returned her attention to the auror.  "As for the rest, we'll see when he wakes up.  It shouldn't be much longer now."

            "The rest?"  Polaris echoed.  She sounded distinctly worried now, more like the bossy and overprotective older sister Remus remembered from their days at Hogwarts.  "He isn't going to wake up… like Denise?"  Polaris, Remus remembered suddenly, had worked with the Longbottoms.  Perhaps there had been more to her killing of Lestrange than mere cold-bloodedness.

            "No, no, nothing like that," Poppy assured her, steering the auror toward Sirius (and incidentally, away from Snape) as she spoke.  "But dementors are rather tricky things.  He may not remember anything that happened tonight, last night," she corrected herself.  "Or he may remember a bit more than he wants to."  Reassuranced delivered, she returned to the other side of the room to have a few words with Minerva.  Remus's ears picked out the phrases "concussion" and "make sure he doesn't fall asleep."  Minerva nodded and seated herself next to Snape's bed, face set.

            Polaris looked at her for a moment, then looked at Sirius.  She hovered uncertainly in the center of the room, appearing as though she were contemplating something deeply unpleasant, the determinedly crossed back over to stand next to Minerva.

            "I'm only going to say this once, so you had better pay attention."  She broke off and took a deep breath.  "I… I may have been just a little bit too harsh just now."

            "May have been?" Minerva said dryly.

            "I'm not apologizing to you," Polaris snapped at her.  "_May_ have been," she repeated.  "I've heard the whole 'I'm a traitor to my House' bit from Vesta a thousand times, and I think it's absolute drivel, but I suppose it's understandable drivel, given what you are."  She sniffed.  "I still think you've sold your soul, but at least you're trying to buy it back.  There's not enough gold in Gringotts to ever accomplish that, but at least you're trying."  Having apparently spoken her piece, she returned to Harry and Remus and stood somewhat awkwardly beside the bed containing Sirius's limp form.  Snape stared after her, blank-faced in total shock.  Remus somewhat echoed the sentiments.  An apology from Polaris, as close as such a thing was to an actual admission of error, was a rare thing indeed.

            Shaking his head, Remus pulled a chair over next to the one occupied by Harry and sat down.

            "Are you alright?" he asked the boy in an undertone, noticing the wide eyes and unusually pale face.  The preceding scene had not been one he had needed to see.  What a way to find out that your teachers were human.

            "I'm fine," Harry said.  "Is Professor Snape going to be okay?"

            "Madame Pomfrey says so.  She says Sirius will be okay too."

            "I know; I heard."  Harry shook his head sadly.  "It's all because of me.  Sirius wouldn't have come here if it wasn't for me."

            "Don't be silly," Polaris told him sharply.  "Of course it's not your fault.  You're not the one who sent the dementors, or lowered the school's defences to the Death Eaters."

            "Yes, but-"

            "No buts, Harry," Remus put in.  "Tonight was in no way due to you."

            Their conversation was interrupted by a faint moan from Sirius.  Remus's attention was redirected in an instant as his friend's eyes opened and slowly focused on him.

            "Moony.  What happened?  Is everyone alright?  Is Harry alright?"

            Remus could feel his face breaking into a huge smile of relief, which was more than matched by an equally wide grin from Harry.  "Harry's fine.  He's right here.  He's a hero, Padfoot.  Cast a patronus in the Great Hall and helped drive the dementors out."

            Sirius's eyes shifted to Harry, almost visible assessing him for damages.  Then, he caught sight of Polaris over Harry's shoulder, and his entire body went stiff.

            "Pols," he whispered, eyes widening.  "I… you…" his voice trailed off.  "When are the Ministry coming?"

            "They're not."  Polaris looked away, not meeting her brother's eyes.  "I haven't contacted them yet."

            "You haven't?  But… but why not?"  He shook his head slightly, closed his eyes.  "Guess it doesn't matter.  But please, please don't tell them about me.  I didn't do it.  Ask Remus, ask Dumbledore, hell, ask Snape.  They can tell you."

            "I already have.  That's why I haven't called the Ministry yet."

            Sirius's face, which had been shuttered and weary a moment before, lit up.  "You believe them?  You believe me?"

             "You don't have the Mark."  Polaris blinked several times, hard.  "Sirius, I…"  She looked at him, then looked away again, blue eyes oddly bright.  "I'm so sorry.  Oh God, Sirius, I'm so, so sorry that we did this to you.  The Hufflepuff aurors were right; I _am_ worse than Barty Crouch.  At last his son was actually guilty."

            Sirius reached a hand up and folded it around his sister's.  The other hand had already found it's way into one of Harry's.  "You thought I _was_ guilty.  _I_ would have thought I was the traitor, after everything that happened.  You couldn't do anything else.  I didn't really expect you to."

            Poppy, noticing almost instantly that her other patient was now awake, made a beeline from Xiomora, who looked relieved to put off the inspection of her injured ankle by another few minutes, towards Sirius.

            "Ah, you're awake.  How do you feel?"

            "Cold, actually," Sirius said.  He shivered.  "Really cold.  They were all around me, weren't they?"

            "They were, but we chased them away," Remus said.  "Did you know that Dementor's will burn if you cast an incendio spell on them?  Or at least, their robes will."

            "Good," Sirius said.  "I hope you torched the sodding bastards."  Poppy, an eyebrow raised at his language, thrust a mug of hot chocolate into his hand.  Sirius absent-mindedly took a sip, then drained the cup in one gulp, color coming almost visibly back into his face.  "Thank you," he said quietly.  He directed the words toward Poppy, but his eyes were on Remus.  Then he started, obviously remembering something.

            "Pols, you AKed Lestrange, didn't you?  I remember, I looked up and he was right behind you…"  His voice trailed off and he shuddered.  "Moony, did I really rip someone's throat out?"

            "We can talk about that tomorrow," Remus said quickly.

            "Yes," Poppy said.  "Most definitely tomorrow.  Now that's you've all seen that he's alright, you can all go off to your own beds.  Black needs sleep."

            Sirius chose that moment to yawn.  He eyed Poppy suspiciously.  "There was something in that chocolate, wasn't there?"

            "Just dormouse extract and chamomile."

            "Dormouse extract?"  Sirius wrinkled his nose, an oddly canine gesture.  "I don't wanna know."

            "No," she agreed.  "You probably don't.  Lupin, Auror Black, Potter—yes, you too; I see you trying to play invisible in that chair.  Out.  You can all come back tomorrow."  She turned away from the four of them and strode purposefully over toward Xiomora.

            "Alright, Hooch, I'll see to that ankle now."

            Xiomora, sitting on one of the empty beds, pulled her foot up into her lap protectively.  "It's not broken," she said quickly.  "You don't need to set it or give me Skele-Grow, or- "

            "Grow up and give me your foot.  I'm sure your ankle's only twisted."  Poppy shook her head disapprovingly.  "Quidditch players."

^_~

Next up:  Chapter Eleven:  _In Which There are Revelations and Reconciliations_.

Featuring Vesta McGonagall.  She's Minerva's little sister, she's Polaris's ex-partner, she's Snape's ex-girlfriend! (yes, she is a bit mad).  Special cameo appearance by Percy Weasley! (alright, gratuitous cameo—I like him, okay). 

I want to extend a special thanks to all of the people who have reviewed me over the course of this fic.  Your feedback has supported me through a rather unpleasant Creative Writing class with a somewhat less than supportive teacher.  For a while I was actually considering putting off choosing a major a bit longer instead of going into Creative writing right away, but y'all helped change my mind.  Unfortunately, the last chapter of the story will probably be somewhat delayed (possibly even another month again) because I am leaving college for the summer, losing both my steady internet access and my beta writer (I'm also going to Switzerland next week).

Thank you to Draquonelle, who has helped me brainstorm and search out plotholes over the past four months, and puts up with me sitting next to her in the computer lab at three in the morning asking questions like "If someone stepped on my hand, how many bones do you think I'd break?"  I'll miss you over the summer.

Andromache Cassandra, Luna Rose, Shila (actually, the title are a take off on the book _Dealing with Dragons _), Moonlight, Alla, Leila C. Snape, Alchemine, and Bloodfly:  Thank you!  I am **so** sorry that it took me such an endless amount of time to update.  This chapter was difficult to write (lots of emotion from people who don't normally display much) and I was ambushed by end of the year paper and finals.  Over the past month, I've written three thesis papers and put together a poetry portfolio, signed up for next year's classes, chosen an academic major, and taken four final exams.  But I did finally find time to get back to "Scars" once I took my last test.

Moonfire, Snidgy, Firebrand, Kit Cloudkicker, & Erin:  Thank you!  I feel the same way (I don't derive sick, twisted, Avery-esque pleasure from torturing my boys, really I don't—the plot required it!).

A Tye, odyssey, Elektra, & St. Fool:  Thank you!  I'm so glad that y'all think I have good characterization—I try very hard to keep everyone believable, especially Snape (he's the hardest to write).

Demeter: Thank you!  Exactly!  Draco is only a sixteen year-old—he's not an evil monster yet (if he's ever going to be).

Enfluerage:  Thank you!  Yes, Polaris doesn't like admitting that she's wrong, or that things aren't all neat and tidy or black and white.  About incidences of Snape's Gryffindor tendencies in canon, I've always thought taking on Fluffy by himself qualified, and going to the Shreiking Shack to confront the convicted murder & werewolf (during a full moon) by himself.

Chary:  Thank you!  Yes, Draco is slowly developing a conscience (but slowly, mind you—he's not going to become heroic overnight).  I kept Avery toned down on purpose.  There are some places my mind doesn't want to go, and it has to go there before it can write them.

Sova: Thank you!  I debated over whether or not to stick in that snipe at Microsoft, and couldn't resist.

Ozma & Faith Accompli:  Thank you!  I put a lot of thought into the Malfoy family dynamic.  Given how Draco seems to look up to him, Lucius has to hold a certain amount of affection toward his son—and angsty tortured abused Draco annoys me as well.

Iuvat equus:  Thank you!  Nope, sorry.  No Harry perspective on the horizon,  Try as I might, I just can't seem to write him (which is why he and Ron and Hermione aren't in this much).  I can do sixteen year-old Severus and seventeen year-old Sirius, but for some reason, fifteen year-old Harry eludes me.

MB: Thank you!  If only you knew how long I've had some of those lines stored in my head—good clever dialogue is hard to write without getting corny.

ChoChang913: Thank you!  Actually, I wasn't planning on having Harry, Ron, and Hermione in the infirmary, but after reading your review I decided to put them in.

Chad-Catsmeat:  Thank you!  I have a big black dog who looks a lot like Padfoot. Amd she's scary as hell when strange people come into our yard and she gets protective, so I thought I'd try to work some of that into Padfoot (Wyleigh would never bite out someone's throat, though).  The chapter names and previews are actually some of my favorite parts to write—they're fun to come up with

RADKA: Thank you!  Yes, the Lestranges are human too.  I tried to get more of that across in this chapter.

Silent Onion: Thank you!  I making you like Snape?  I'm glad;  he's one of the more complex characters in the series, and one of the most interesting.  In the attack, Harry fought in the Great Hall (last line of defence).  The Death Eaters all attacked at one point because the protective charms guarding the castle could only be lowered for a finite area—taking them all down would be impossible for one wizard (except maybe Dumbledore).  As it is, Flitwick is going to do some major revamping of the charms.  Only the Heads of houses can touch them, but one head of House isn't supposed to be able to bypass them on his or her own.  The Dark side's version of a flanking attack was the dementors that they sent in to the Great Hall.

I Light:  Thank you!  About the display, displace thing:  Voldemort is displaying his anger, but he is also displacing it in a sense (it's likely that much of it is actually directed toward the light side, who have defeated his troops, but they're not there, and the Death eaters are a convenient target).  I admit that I didn't use the term in exactly the appropriate sense, though (But it made such a nice sounding title).


	11. In Which There are Revelations and Recon...

Disclaimer:  This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. The character of Caius the raven belongs to Draquonelle, who has kindly allowed me to borrow him (Vesta McGonagall is hers too, though she owes something of a debt to the Ingrid Berman character in Alfred Hitchcock's "Notorious"). In addition, I got the name Polaris Black for Sirius's sister from someone else's fanfic, but I can't remember whose (her character, however, belongs entirely to me and Draquonelle—and to Victor Hugo, I suppose, since she's based partly on his Inspector Javert).

Posted by:  Elspeth (AKA Elspethdixon, L Squared).

Ships:  Sirius/Claire Sinistra and a potential Snape/McGonagall

* This chapter is endless, endless.  I'm warning y'all now.  And it's not stopping here!  There's going to be an epilogue. It took me far to long to write it, and in the interim there have been a lot of changes as FF.net.  The greatest of these being, of course, the loss of NC-17 fics.  While I disagree with this development and commiserate with all those who either had their stories pulled or lost access to their favorite stories, I do not personally write NC-17, so my own status will be unaffected, as I decided after some thought not to pull my stories in protest. So "Scars" will continue unaffected by the controversy—except for that Sirius/Claire smut scene I was planning on writing (oh darn). *

Chapter Eleven:  _In Which There are Revelations and Reconciliations._

            Polaris Black sat in front of the fireplace in Headmaster Dumbledore's office, waiting nervously for the appearance of the Ministry operative who would soon be contacting her.  She had sent off her report this morning, a masterpiece of half-truths, misdirections, and a few outright lies.  It had been the first time in her entire career as an auror that she had ever omitted anything from a report.  The first deliberate lies in twenty years of service.  Falsehood number one: Nowhere in the report did she discuss Severus Snape's role in allowing the Death Eaters access to the Hogwarts grounds (this had never been mentioned to her in so many words, but she could put two and two together, and when a system of defences could only be lowered by one of the Heads of Houses, and the Head of Slytherin just happened to be a double agent…).  Falsehood number two: Snape's injuries were attributed to his role in defending the castle, and no mention was made of his spying activities.  Much as it galled her to compromise herself to protect the man, even she had to admit that the information he provided was valuable, and that they could not afford to have his cover blown.  And falsehood number three: She had made no mention of her brother anywhere in the report.

            It was that last evasion, perhaps the biggest one, which troubled her conscience the most.  The first two omissions could be justified as minimizing intelligence leaks, but the last…

            Any sighting of Sirius Black was to be reported to the Ministry at once.  It was standard operating procedure for fugitives, and helping to hide him would count as aiding and abetting.  But if she turned him in, delivered him to justice, she had no doubt in her mind that he would be given the Dementors' Kiss immediately.  She couldn't face that, couldn't participate in it.  Even when she had believed that he deserved it, the thought had hurt, and now that she knew he was innocent…  Her own words to Snape echoed mockingly in her ears:  "_Innocent blood never washes off."_

            A good auror never flinched from his or her duty, never made exceptions based on personal feelings.  Personal wasn't the same as important.  But a good auror also protected the innocent.  And fourteen years ago, when it had mattered the most, she hadn't.  She wasn't going to hand her little brother over to be tortured again.

            _But this secret keeping, Polaris mused worriedly, as the earnest, bespectacled features of a minor Ministry employee appeared in the fireplace before her, __is going to be difficult._

            "Auror Black, ma'am," the young man said rather pompously, after she had managed a semblance of a polite greeting.  "My supervisor has directed me to tell you that she has decided that the circumstances warrant a direct visit by the Department.  We will be arriving in Hogsmead later today.  She, er, wants to interview the students and faculty personally."

            "Which supervisor would that be, Mr… ah, Weasley, isn't it?"  With that hair, he had to be one of Arthur's boys.

            "Agent McGonagall, ma'am."

            "Oh," Polaris said, feeling a sinking sensation in her stomach.  "Yes, I know her."  How was she ever going to manage to lie to Vesta?  Her ex-partner had always had an uncanny gift for reading people.  "What time will you two be here?" she asked, hoping that it would be well into the afternoon, so that Snape would be out of the hospital wing.  Perhaps Vesta would be distracted enough by the sight of his injuries that she would neglect to ask about Sirius.

            "Around six o' clock, ma'am.  I asked Agent McGonagall if she could be a bit more exact," he added apologetically, "but all she said was 'around sixish.'"

^_~

            When Sirius woke up again, mid-afternoon sunlight was slanting in through the hospital wings windows, illuminating a mostly empty ward that was a distinct contrast to the crowded chaos of the previous night.

            "Remus?  Harry?"

            "I sent them back to their rooms to get some sleep."  Madam Pomfrey materialized at the side of his bed, hands laden with bandages and potion jars.  "They're probably in class now.  Sit up please.  I need to check that slash on your back."

            Sirius sat up slowly; bracing himself for pain as the motion pulled at the slash bisecting his back from shoulder to hip.  To his surprise, there was none, only a slight feeling of tightness.  Forgetting for a moment that a human spine was not quite as flexible as a canine one, he twisted his head around to try and get a look.

            "Hold still," Madam Pomfrey said absently, as she began peeling bandages off--taking all the hair and half the skin off his back with them, it felt like.

            "Ow!"

            "I said, hold still.  Hmm…  Healing nicely.  Another twenty-four hours and it should be as good as new.  I'm afraid you're always going to have a scar though."

            Sirius finally succeeded in catching a glimpse of the three-quarters healed scar on his back out of the corner of his eye.  It looked a good half-month old, cleanly mended and with no sign of infection.  He had forgotten how good wizarding medicine was.  "It's almost gone!"

            "Of course."  Madam Pomfrey looked mildly affronted.  "I've put enough students back together after quidditch matches to make a simple laceration easy work.  _You haven't taken a forty-foot fall off a Cleansweep.  This time."  She pursed her lips and studied him consideringly.  "Do you still feel cold?  I can give you more chocolate."  _

            "No," Sirius said.  It was mostly true.  "I'm fine."

            "In that case, I think I may be able to discharge you later this afternoon, provided you promise to do nothing strenuous."

            "Do animagus transformations count?"  If he couldn't resume his disguise as "Snuffles" there would be little point in leaving the hospital wing at all, unless he snuck out under James's old invisibility cloak.

            "Probably," Madam Pomfrey said.  "But as you obviously can't go walking around the castle as a human, I suppose there's no choice."  She sounded vaguely disapproving.  "It's enough of a danger having you in here as it is.  It's only a matter of time before one of the students comes in."

            Sirius was seized by a momentary urge to protest that getting hurt hadn't been his fault, but managed to quell the impulse.  He had spent too much time in here as a student, visiting Remus after the full moon, suffering under Madam Pomfrey's disapproving eyes after quidditch matches ("Was it really necessary, Black, to break the Ravenclaw chaser's arm?"), or attempting to convince her that yes, he and James and Snape and Evan Rosier had _all somehow managed to fall down the stairs on the same day.  And no, he hadn't pushed any of them.  "I could change now, if you want me to?" he offered._

            "No," she shook her head decisively.  "Not yet.  I'd like to keep you in human form for as long as possible.  It's not healthy for an animagus to spend as much time in animal shape as you've been, especially after any sort of psychological trauma.  Psychological, and even some physical traits can start being carried over into human form."

            Sirius cocked his head to one side and looked at her inquiringly.

            "Then again, perhaps it's too late."

            A smile began tugging on the corners of Sirius's lips.  He had never heard the mistress of the hospital wing crack a joke before.  He tipped his head toward the other side and did his best impression of a canine whine.  It was a very accurate impression.  Madam Pomfrey didn't laugh, but she looked for a moment as though she wanted to.

            "Where's Polaris?" Sirius asked, suddenly remembering that _she, unlike Remus and Harry, did not have any classes to teach or attend in the afternoon.  Dueling classes were held in the evening.  "Has she… has she reported to the ministry yet?"  Polaris had said the night before that she wasn't going to turn him in, right?  __Actually, he remembered, __what she said was that she believes I'm innocent, which isn't necessarily gonna stop her from handing me over to justice.  "The innocent," his sister was fond of saying, usually just before she hauled somebody in for questioning, "should have nothing to fear from the law."_

            "Auror Black," Madam Pomfrey said stiffly, no longer looking as though she felt at all like laughing, "contacted the Ministry this morning.  She came here to tell you that she had left 'all information of a personal nature' out of her report, but you were still asleep, and she was bothering my other patient, so I made her leave."

            "Other patient?"  Sirius's eyes followed Madam Pomfrey's gaze across the ward to where Minerva McGonagall sat sound asleep in one of the hospital wing's legendarily uncomfortable chairs.  Her hair was coming loose from its bun, but she had exchanged the flannel tartan nightgown of the night before for her customary Victorian-style green robes.  Stretched out in the bed next to her was an equally comatose Snape, his left hand splinted and bandaged and his face disfigured by a mass of swollen purple bruises.

            Sirius whistled.  "What happened to him?"

            "Oh, that's right.  You missed most of the excitement in here last night, didn't you?"

            "What sort of excitement?"

            "An hour or so after Remus brought you in here, he showed up again with Severus.  _And that wretched bird."  She nodded toward the small black raven perched like a gargoyle on the headboard of Snape's bed.  "I hate that thing, and it hates me.  Have you ever tried to set three broken fingers while a vicious-tempered crow demon glares at you out of its beady little eyes and makes as if to peck you every time your patient flinches?"_

            "No," Sirius said.  It was obviously a rhetorical question.  "How did Snape break his fingers?"

            "He wasn't very specific, but I think someone stepped on them."

            "Oh, what a shame."  _Too bad it wasn't me._

            Madam Pomfrey chose to ignore the sarcasm.  "Speaking of fingers, now that I know you're up and in relatively good condition, I had better go wake up Severus and take the splints off his hand."  She sighed.  "I wish I could let him sleep for a little bit longer, but the Ministry is sending an official in to interview the staff later this afternoon, and they'll almost certainly want to talk to him.  I don't think I'll disturb Minerva just yet, though.  She was awake all night and half the morning.  You just sit tight, and I'll have the house elves bring you some breakfast, or lunch, rather, in a few minutes."

            Sirius sat cross-legged on the bed and leaned his chin on his hand, watching as Madam Pomfrey crossed the room and bent over Snape, shaking him awake.  He noticed that she stayed as far away from Caius as possible.  If this was the same Caius Snape had had in school, he didn't blame her.  He still had vivid memories of Snape's annoying and over-protective familiar.  He and James had tried to make friends with the thing by feeding it, but had given up when it bit them.  James still had the scar on his finger.  Would have still had it.

            Madam Pomfrey was talking to Snape, using a low, quiet voice so as not to wake up McGonagall.  Unfortunately, it had the additional effect of making it impossible for Sirius to overhear the conversation.  He really missed Padfoot's ears when he was in his own shape.

            Snape sat up, extending his arm forward for Madam Pomfrey's inspection, and Sirius sat up straighter, feeling one of his eyebrows go up.  The Potions Master had been worked over by somebody, or several somebodies, who had been very enthusiastic.  And they hadn't been out for information, either.  Livid bruises in a panorama of colours shading from purple into black were stamped across his torso, and his face was a battered mess, one eye swollen shut.  Interrogation subjects were rarely hit in the face--one couldn't talk through a broken jaw.

            _He doesn't have any defensive wounds on his arms, Sirius realized, as he watched Madam Pomfrey go to work removing the gauze and splints from Snape's left hand.  Which meant that either Snape hadn't fought back or tried to defend himself--unlikely--or someone had prevented him from doing so.  __Odd.  Sirius had fantasized for years about having somebody hold Snape back while he himself punched the daylights out of him, but now it looked as though someone else had done exactly that, and for some reason he didn't feel very happy about it.  __Voldemort and his Death Eaters must not have been too happy about being led into a trap last night.  Spying looks to be rather a high-risk job._

            "There," Madam Pomfrey said, as she used her wand to sever the last bit of adhesive tape and pulled away the final splint away.  "Everything has healed up rather nicely, if I do say so myself.  A few days, and even a muggle x-ray wouldn't be able to tell that anything had been broken."

            "If everything's healed, why won't my fingers move?" Snape asked, sounding uncharacteristically worried.

            "You've sustained some fairly severe bruises," she explained reassuringly, "and your fingers are going to be somewhat stiff and painful for a while.  Unfortunately, modern medical magic has yet to come up with a way to heal bruises overnight."

            Snape inspected his swollen, purple and black fingers carefully, as though they were some unknown potion ingredient.  Sirius surveyed the other wizard with interest. Snape had his hand raised so that, from where Sirius sat, the inside of his forearm was visible.  Sirius had never really seen a Dark Mark before--he had been in animagus form when Snape had displayed his Mark to Fudge after the Triwizard Tournament, and Padfoot's eyes were not as good as a human's.

            The livid red scar tissue of the skull and serpent design stood out against Snape's pale skin as clearly as the glowing green sigils of Death Eater raids against the night sky.  The scar had to be fifteen years old at least, but it looked raw and barely healed, fresher than the still-tender slice across Sirius's back.  A handful of thin white lines bracketed it, faint and long healed.  Sirius made a faint sound in his throat as his eyes landed on them, and suddenly he was seeing _through Snape, past the hospital wing and into another, much smaller and darker room._

            Travers and Wilkes had both tried to claw their arms off, near the end.  For a second, he could see Kitty Wilkes again, face contorted with hysterical laughter and fingernails red with blood and scraps of flesh.  She had gouged her forearm almost to the bone.  The Dementors had swarmed in, drawn to the sound and to the smell of blood, and her laughter had turned to screams.

            "Is there a problem, Black?"

            The sharp inquiry jolted Sirius back into the present, and he realized that he had unconsciously hunched his shoulders and wrapped his arms around himself as if to ward off the cold.

            "Wilkes clawed her arm half off.  In Azkaban, I mean.  So deep you could see bone."  Sirius answered before he could stop himself, still half caught in the memory.  "It went gangrenous.  That's how she died."

            "That's absolutely charming," Snape sneered, voice as sarcastic as ever but slightly hoarse.  "Thank you _so much for sharing.  Is there any purpose behind that complete non sequitor, or did you just feel like being disgusting?"_

            "I was just... remembering," Sirius said.  He shivered, and realized suddenly that there were goosebumps on his arms.  "I'd forgotten about it until now."

            "I'm sure you must be delighted to dredge something up out of your addled brain, however, I'm not interested in your recovered memories."  Snape's words fairly oozed with dislike for Sirius, and Sirius was sure that there was a scowl somewhere under those bruises.

            _He doesn't want me looking at his arm, Sirius realized suddenly.  The other wizard didn't want to anyone to know about those scars, and he was trying to distract him by picking a fight.  Really, after waving Sirius's wrists around in front of half the faculty, Snape more than deserved a taste of his own medicine.  Still, he decided to have mercy on the bastard and change the subject._

            "My scars are nastier looking than yours," he said childishly, holding his wrists up in Snape's direction.  "And I've got more of them."

            "Mine were more painful."

            "How do you know?" Sirius demanded indignantly.

            "Because burns are always more painful than lacerations."

            "It is not a competition," Madam Pomfrey snapped, looking annoyed.  "Men," she muttered.  "Asclepius save me from men and quidditch players.  If anyone needs me," she added, "I'll be in the next room.  Try not to kill each other in my absence."  And she bustled out of the room, irritation fairly steaming off her.

            Snape and Sirius looked at each other for a moment.  The situation was far too familiar--both of them in bandages and an impatient Madame Pomfrey scolding all present impartially before going to fetch the wrath of the school authorities down on their heads.  Except this time, they had not caused each other's injuries, and there were no angry professors waiting to descend on them with detentions--only the Ministry.

            In the sudden, uncomfortable silence, Sirius became aware of a faint rumbling sound coming from across the room.

            "What's that?" he asked, glancing around in sudden suspicion.  Intellectually, he knew that there was no way Death Eaters or Dementors could have snuck into the room, but still…

Snape was staring at the slumbering McGonagall, looking as though his birthday had come early.

 "She's purring," he said, almost gleefully. "Purring. I am going to treasure this memory for the rest of my life. I'm going to make sure that _she treasures it for the rest of __her life. Every time she tries to get me to help chaperone a student dance, or cover someone else's classes, or tells me to go easier on Potter or Longbottom, I'm going to remind her that she purrs."_

            Sirius began to laugh.  He couldn't help it; the concept of McGonagall _purring was something it was impossible to consider with a straight face.  "She's __purring?  I was right!  She does purr!  James and Remus owe me three galleons!" he cried triumphantly.  Then he broke off, remembering that James owed no one anything anymore, would never owe anyone anything again.  _

            The purring suddenly stopped as McGonagall began to stir, awakened by Sirius's momentary shout of laughter.  "What is it?" she demanded, sitting up straight in her chair.  "What's going on?'

            Snape's one open eye was sparkling with malicious delight.  "You were purring," he informed her.  "Exactly like a kitten.  It was adorable."  He shook his head, then halted, wincing slightly at the movement.  "And all these years I thought you snored."

            "I was doing nothing of the sort!"  McGonagall protested, highly affronted.  "I've never purred in my life, in animagus form or out of it.  And I don't snore either."

            "Meow.  Me-ow," the crow cawed from its place on Snape's headboard.  Minerva ignored it, though her lips tightened and her face flushed slightly.

            "Nevertheless, you were purring," Snape said smoothly.  "Just ask Black."

            McGonagall looked sharply at Sirius, obviously finding confirmation of Snape's words in his face.

            "It could be worse," he volunteered.  "You've never accidentally hissed at someone.  I growl at people all the time.  And Remus says I twitch my feet when I dream, like a dog, but I think he's making that up."  Something suddenly occurred to him.  "What were you doing asleep in here anyway? The chairs are bloody uncomfortable, if I remember right."

            "I..." she paused, glancing at Snape, an unreadable emotion on her face.  "Poppy asked me to stay.  To keep Severus awake for her, last night.  I suppose I must have fallen asleep this morning."

            "Why on earth didn't you go back to bed once she told me that could go to sleep?"  Snape demanded.

            McGonagall didn't answer, but Sirius could have sworn she blushed, just a bit.  Inspiration struck. No, it couldn't be.  _I've got to be imagining things.  Still…  the way the two of them were sitting, staring at each other, each trying not to meet the other's eyes…  His lips began to twitch._

            "You two are so," Sirius paused, searching for an appropriate adjective, "_cute together."  The other two looked startled, then indignant.  Unable to resist, he continued,  "Beauty and the Beast.  No wait," he added, anticipating Snape's response, "that's me and Claire.  The pair of you are more like __Jane Eyre, or maybe __Faust.  Or __Phantom of the Opera."_

            "I resent that," McGonagall said.

            "Thank you," Snape said to her.

            "I do not in the slightest resemble Christine Daae!"

            "No, she was prettier.  And much, much younger."

            McGonagall's eyebrows went up, and her lips thinned angrily.  "Severus, how would you like to spend the rest of your life as a bat?"

            Snape was saved from answering when the hospital wing door began to swing open.  Instantly, without even needing to think about it, Sirius became Padfoot again.  _Bloody Hell!  That was close!_

_            A pair of Hufflepuff seventh-years edged uneasily into the room.  When they saw Snape and McGonagall, they stopped.  The shorter of the two girls blushed bright red and put both hands up over her face._

            The taller girl approached McGonagall apprehensively.  "Is… is Madam Pomfrey here?" she asked tentatively.  "Melissa, er, needs to talk to her.  She thinks she might be, er…" she looked at Snape, faltered, and broke off.  

            "I'm not gonna get kicked out of school, am I?" the shorter girl, presumably Melissa, blurted out.  "My parents are going to kill me."

            McGonagall stood up, exuding an almost tangible aura of disapproval, and led the two girls into the adjoining room to speak with Madam Pomfrey.  She returned almost immediately, now minus the students and shook her head, sighing.  "Seventeen year-olds.  I feel almost sorry for the poor girl.  When I get my hands on Geoffrey Heddleby…  I suppose I had better go and get Amaryllis."  She paused in her muttered tirade and looked at Snape, whose efforts at keeping a straight face had not been entirely successful.  "Why are you smirking like that?"

            "Because," he said, with all the satisfaction of someone watching a messy situation descend on someone else, while knowing that he does not have to get involved,  "I am not Amaryllis Sprout, and this is _not my problem."_

            Minerva pursed her lips.  "I seem to remember Azrael Bale storming into the staff room not so many years ago complaining about the reckless fifth year Slytherin who had poisoned half the dormitory."

            "That wasn't my fault!  I told Evan Rosier to leave the lid on that cauldron so that the poisonous vapors wouldn't escape, but he didn't listen to me.  I mean…  Nevermind."

^_~

            Remus entered the staff room that evening to find most of the rest of the faculty already there, waiting somewhat nervously in small clusters, grouped along House alignments.  Flitwick, Vector, Claire, and Ogham from Ancient Runes were grouped near the fireplace, while Minerva and Hagrid stood together by the far wall.  Franklin Watson, the Muggle Studies professor, was seated on the couch next to Xiomora Hooch, and Trelawney hovered somewhere in the middle of the room, presumably driven away from the Gryffindor group by Minerva's pointed sniffs.  Dumbledore, ensconced in an overstuffed brown velveteen armchair with his feet up on a small matching ottoman, ignored the byplay around him with the ease of long practice.

            At six o' clock precisely, Polaris strode determinedly into the room, heading straight for the green leather armchair in the darkest corner, where she would have an unobstructed view of the door.  As she shifted copies of _Alchemist's Journal, Apothecary  Quarterly, and the __Oxford Journal of BioChemistry out of the way and sat down, Filch, who had been occupying the next chair, unobtrusively moved to another seat.  Remus wondered if she knew whose chair she was sitting in, and what she would do when she found out._

            His musings where answered a few minutes later when Snape limped into the room, with Padfoot following a few pointed steps behind him.  Padfoot made straight for the rug in front of the fireplace (which, incidentally, put him right between Claire and Remus, as well as at the very edge of the Gryffindor group).  Snape paused by the door, staring coldly at Polaris.  Caius, perched on his right wrist, eyed her with equal dislike.

            "Poppy and Amaryllis should be along shortly," he announced, "as soon as they finish dealing with some… student related issues."  He smirked slightly.  "I imagine Miss Parker and Mr. Heddleby are currently very, very unhappy."

            Minerva sniffed in obvious disapproval, though who the subject of the sniff was--Snape or the two Hufflepuffs--Remus couldn't tell.

            Snape was continuing to stare at Polaris, a pointed, unblinking stare guaranteed to disturb and intimidate and make any excuses for unfinished homework die upon the victim's lips.  The fact that his left eye was still purple and swollen half shut diminished the effect only slightly.  

            "What?" Polaris snapped defensively.

            "_You," Snape said, imbuing the word with the sort of disgust he usually reserved solely for Harry Potter, "are in my seat."_

            Polaris looked for a moment as if she were about to start an argument with him, and then, probably realizing how juvenile it would sound to fight over a chair--especially with someone who still had one arm in a sling--she got up and moved one seat over, into the chair that had been occupied by Filch (now sitting on the "Hufflepuff" couch).  Snape and Caius immediately took up possession of the armchair, and he and Polaris proceeded to ignore each other industriously.

            Remus had listened to the preceding conversation with only a corner of his mind.  From the moment Snape and "Snuffles" had walked into the room, most of his attention had been on Padfoot.  The giant black dog was moving a bit stiffly, as if the remnants of yesterday's injuries still pained him, and he had made straight for the warmest spot in the room.  Still, he was there, not hiding under a bed in the hospital wing, which is what Remus felt that _he probably would have been doing, had he been the one attacked by Dementors.  Interesting, that Padfoot had come straight to him and Claire, instead of going over to Polaris…  His thoughts were interrupted when a cold nose shoved itself into his hand, demanding attention.  Sometimes it was very comforting to just sit and pet a dog.  __Even if you know that he's just laying his head on your foot because it gives him the best angle from which to look up Claire Sinistra's skirt._

            The minutes crawled by.  Poppy and Amaryllis had just made a rather belated appearance, and Hagrid had begun to offer around a tray of scones the consistency of hard tack, when the Ministry delegation finally made their appearance.

            Percy Weasley strode briskly into the room, coming to a slightly hesitant halt when he realized that he was surrounded by all of his old teachers.  In the traditional grey ministry robe, he looked, Remus thought, rather like a hot coal on top of a pile of ashes.

            "Good evening, Headmaster Dumbledore, sir," he said, nodding towards the old wizard.  "I apologize for our lateness.  We would have been here sooner, but-"

            "Oh, for God's sake, Weasley," a woman's voice said scoldingly from the doorway, "stop apologizing.  The Ministry never apologizes; we make other people apologize to us."  Remus turned towards the door to recognize Vesta McGonagall, draped against the door-jamb in a dramatic pose.  Her auburn hair fell forward over one eye like a nineteen-forties movie star's, and her non-regulation black and white robe clung to her well proportioned curves.  She was wearing a great deal of make-up, which failed to conceal the fact that she was obviously well over thirty.  She was, if he remembered correctly, pushing forty, and she looked as though she were trying to push it as far away as possible.

            "I got your report, Pub," she continued.  "And there are some…" Vesta broke off abruptly as her eyes landed on Snape, and let out a low whistle.  "Sev Darling, you look like absolute hell."

            "Vesta," Snape said coolly.  "Charming, as always. "  From the back of his chair, Caius let out a creaky imitation of a wolf whistle.  "Ves-tah," he croaked.

            "My God," Vesta continued, ignoring both Caius and Snape's less than cordial response, "how long has it been?"

            "Well, assuming the interrogation room at auror headquarters doesn't count, I think the last time we saw each other was at Evan Rosier's funeral."  The air temperature in the room suddenly seemed to drop several degrees.

            Vesta drew herself up straight and stepped into the room, closing the door behind her.  "Severus," she began, voice minus its usual affected drawl.  "I really am sorry about Evan.  Things weren't supposed to happen the way they did."  

            "It wasn't… entirely your fault," Snape said, rather grudgingly.  "Your squad would never have gotten near Rosier if someone hadn't sold him out."

            Vesta's eyes widened slightly, but she displayed no other evidence of surprise.  "That would explain a great deal," she said speculatively.

            Polaris shook her head in exasperation, setting her braid swinging.  "Vesta," she interrupted brusquely, "just drop it.  It was self-defence.  Rosier was a criminal resisting arrest.  If he'd lived, he would have spent the rest of his life in Azkaban.  You probably did him a favour!  Anyway," she went on, "you and Severus can reminisce about old school friends later.  We have business to take care of."

            Remus wanted to cheer at the change of subject.  The air in the room had been growing so heavily laden with emotional tension that he'd nearly been able to smell it, and the rest of the staff had begun to look extremely uncomfortable.  Not to mention Percy Weasley, who had begun to asphyxiate with horrified disbelief when he'd heard Vesta refer to Snape as "Sev Darling."

            "Ah, yes," Vesta seized on the new topic eagerly.  "Business.  Pub, that report you sent in this morning was a marvel of succinctness.  I should very much like to know just how the Death Eaters managed to get onto the grounds in the first place, not to mention why Severus looks as though he's been run over by a basilisk.  And my superiors," this to Dumbledore, "want to know how you plan to prevent any further attacks in the future."  She snorted in a surprisingly unladylike manner.  "This incident seems to have finally tipped Fudge over from denial into panic.  You can expect a deluge of owls begging for advice any day now."

            "I'm sure the Minister knows what he's doing…" Percy offered half-heartedly.

            "Rubbish."  Vesta and Polaris exchanged identical disgusted glances.  "He's too concerned about alienating his constituency to do anything useful."'

            This time, Dumbledore didn't even try to defend Fudge.  "Agent McGonagall," he said instead. "Perhaps you and Mr. Weasley should interview the staff individually, so as to get the fullest possible picture of last nights events."

            "Excellent idea," Vesta said.  "Weasley?"

            "Yes, Ma'am?"

            "We'll take them in threes.  You can start with Flitwick, Hooch, and Hagrid.  I want to finish this up before the Hogshead closes up for the night."

            Percy dutifully collected the first three professors and retreated with them into the smaller room off the staff room to start interviewing them, an immense notepad clutched in one hand.

            "Right, then."  Vesta crossed over to the fireplace and leaned against the mantel.  "Lupin, Severus, Minnie," she pointed one green-painted fingernail at her older sister, "I'll start with you three.  Then Sinistra, Trelawny, and Vector."  She paused, glancing down at Padfoot, who was sprawled out across the hearthrug at Claire's feet.  "And who is this handsome boy?" she cooed, bending down to pet him.

            "Careful, Vesta," Snape said, before she could complete the motion.  "He bites. Just ask Nott."

            Padfoot gave a momentary snarl, and snapped his teeth once in Snape's direction, making an audible _click._

            "There's something familiar about him," Vesta continued, ignoring Snape's remark.  "Whose is he?  Hagrid's?"

            "Mine," Remus said, at the same time that Claire said, "Mine, I think."

            "He's something of a Gryffindor House mascot," Minerva said.

            "Hmm," Vesta responded, ignoring Snape's advice and rubbing Padfoot's ears.  She seemed oblivious to the glares she was receiving from both Claire, who was observing Padfoot's response to the caress suspiciously, and Minerva, whose eyes had started to shoot daggers about the time Vesta had first begun talking to Snape.  "His eyes are the same colour as Polaris's," she observed.  Then she straightened, brushing the dog fur off her sleeve.  "And now down to business."

            "You may use my office for the interviews, if you need to," Dumbledore offered.

            "Thank you, but we'll be fine right here.  I'll just cast a Cone of Silence around the four of us.  No, Severus, don't get up.  The rest of us will just sit around you.  Pub, find a new seat."

            Remus and Claire obediently shifted seats, Claire moving into the one Polaris had just grudgingly vacated.  Padfoot slunk unobtrusively--at least, as unobtrusively as a dog the size of a small bear was capable of slinking--into the corner after them, obviously intending to listen in on the conversation.

            "Alright," Vesta said as soon as she'd finished casting the sound-deadening charm.  "Will one of you please tell me what the Hell happened last night?  Pub's report placed you in the Great Hall, Severus, and while Dementors are very nasty things, they're not known for beating their victims black and blue, so what did?"

            There was a long pause.

            "Would I be correct in assuming that it was your former comrades who decided to pound you into oblivion?"  Vesta looked around her at the instant expressions of chagrin on the interviewees' faces and snorted.  "Yes, Sev, I know what you've been doing.  Who do you think Albus sends the information you collect _in to?"  She shook her head.  "Everyone's so afraid of another Rookwood that we end up keeping more secrets from our own side than we do from the enemy.  Do you know that idiot Fudge actually suggested removing all the Slytherins from Department of Mysteries?  Some department he'd have been left with; a dozen Ravenclaws and a handful of Hufflepuffs, and no field operatives.  Fortunately, deputy department head Croaker is a Slytherin, and he put a stop to it.  But I digress.  You.  Bruises. Explain."_

            Snape eyed the long green nail pointing at him uneasily and began to talk.  He gave a short account of what had happened when the Dementors broke in to the Great Hall--very grudgingly acknowledging Harry's role in driving them off--and then began on the Death Eater meeting, sounding unusually vague and terse.

            "After the attack was over, I was summoned to a gathering.  I escaped from your harpy of a former partner and apparated there.  The Dark Lord was… somewhat displeased with night's events, and decided to make his displeasure felt.  Circumstances indicated that our plans had been leaked, by someone with access to Dumbledore.  Fortunately, The Dark Lord believes that the leak was accidental.  He delivered an object lesson on the inadvisability of failing him, and then dismissed us.  I returned to Hogwarts and to my office, and stayed there until Lupin came and suggested that I go talk to Poppy Pomfrey."

            "In other words, You-Know-Who had one of his minions, probably Matthew Avery, beat you bloody because he thought you'd accidentally let slip that there was going to be an attack.  And then you came back here and hid in your office like a wounded animal until Lupin came down and dragged you to the hospital wing.  Am I right?" she glanced inquiringly at Remus and Minerva.  Remus nodded.

            Vesta turned back to Snape.  "I assume you did more at the meeting than just serve as a punching bag?  How badly are Voldemort's people hurt?"

            Caius fluffed his feathers uneasily as Vesta said the name, shifting from foot to foot.  "Snake.  Ten points from Sly-ther-in."  They ignored him.

            Snape looked at Vesta, meeting her eyes for the first time.  "Goyle's arm was injured in the attack.  And Antoine Lestrange and Ripley Nott are dead."

            "Too bad."  Vesta said flatly.  "Death was too easy for Lestrange.  He and his wife deserved to suffer in Azkaban forever for what they did to Denise and Frank."  She shuddered.  "I was the one who found them.  You have _no idea…  Well, maybe you do.  How did he die?"_

            "Auror Black cast an avada kedavra on Lestrange," Minerva said, her voice neutral.  "Nott I didn't see, but from what I've heard I gather his end was a bit… bloodier."

            "Snuffles bit him," Remus volunteered, hoping to keep the discussion on that topic to a minimum.  Sirius, in animagus form or not, was not something he wanted to talk about to a Ministry official, even if she was Minerva's sister.  Though, come to think of it, they weren't exactly looking at each other with sisterly love.  More like two cats eyeing each other up while deciding whether or not to fight.

            "_Bit is rather an understatement," Snape said dryly.  "I thought at first that it had to be a curse of some kind.  His entire throat was gone.  You could see his __spine."_

            Padfoot made a faint whimpering noise and hung his head, looking guilty.

            "This adorable thing?" Vesta sounded surprised, but darted an appraising look at Padfoot's teeth.  "I suppose he could be rather dangerous, at that."

            "Don't worry," Remus said, ruffling Padfoot's ears affectionately.  "He's usually very sweet."  It was rather ironic really.  Remus had lived most of his life with the pervasive fear that he might attack and savage somebody one full moon, and yet in all this time he had never killed another human being, either as a man or as a wolf.  Vampires, ghouls, and lethifolds, yes, but never another human.  Instead, it had been Sirius who had ended up inflicting death with tooth and claw.

            "Sweet?" Snape sneered.  "He's bitten me on the leg twice."

            "Perhaps if you hadn't kicked him, Severus," Minerva said tartly, "he would not have."

            "You say Pub killed Lestrange?" Vesta asked, pulling the topic back to the previous night.

            "I wasn't there," Snape said, still sounding faintly resentful of the fact that he had been kept out of the fight, "but it's exactly the sort of thing one would expect from her."

            "It was a bit chilling, Vesta," Minerva admitted.  "He was standing, ready to put a curse on her, and she didn't even hesitate, just pointed her wand and _flash."_

            "His wife tried to attack her then," Remus put in, "and she disarmed her and knocked her out, cool as you please.  She's really a very impressive dueler, almost as good as Flitwick."

            "Pub?  She's better than Flitwick."  Vesta shook her head.  "I think she may be even better than Severus, and he's death on two legs.  She might be as good as Moody.  She uses curses he won't touch--he always tried to bring them in alive."

            "Ms. Black appears to have no such qualms," Snape said.  "Therezia Lestrange spent the whole meeting huddled over Antoine's dead body, swearing to wreak bloody retribution on his killer."  He sounded faintly pleased at the prospect.

            "I'll have to congratulate Pub.  She's acquired her first personal vendetta."  Vesta gave a slight smile.  "When you collect ten you get to join a club," she said brightly.  "We have a secret handshake and everything, right, Sev?"

            "I would never belong to any organization juvenile enough to have a secret handshake."

            "No," Vesta said.  "You lot just give each other silly-looking tattoos instead."  Remus and Minerva exchanged identical horrified looks.  No one on the faculty ever mentioned Snape's Mark; it was a subject as taboo as Remus's lycanthropy.  

            "It's a brand, not a tattoo," Snape snarled.  "As you know perfectly well."

            "Don't worry, Sev Darling," Vesta said airily.  "I find it quite sexy."

            "Obviously."  The word dripped acid.

            "Oh, come on.  Wilkes, Travers, Dolohov, they were all just business.  You were the only one who ever _meant anything."_

            "That's interesting, considering that you only dated him twice.  At Hogwarts," Minerva commented, very dryly.  She sounded almost… jealous?  Remus considered this, then dismissed the thought.  _Surely not._

            "Oh, but his image has been enshrined in my heart."  Vesta fluttered her eyelashes and gave a breathy sigh.

            Padfoot sneezed in a pointed manner.

            "For once," Snape said, "I agree with the dog."

            "No, it's true," Vesta protested.  "You were so tall, dark, and… interesting looking.  Plus, you were the only boy in Slytherin who didn't fall all over me.  You were too busy having a hopeless crush on my-"

            "One more word, Vesta," Snape interrupted, "and your Ministry career will come to an abrupt and green-lit end."

            Vesta's face slid into a pretty but obviously feigned pout, however, she heeded the warning and returned to her interrogation.  "You have no sense of humour, Sev.  You're almost as much fun to tease as Pub is.  But I'll be good.  Now that I've found out who rearranged your face, I'd like to know precisely how your, shall we say, associates, got inside the castle's wards.  And" this to Remus and Minerva, "how you managed to drive them off."

            "The wards were temporarily lowered," Snape said, not meeting anyone's eyes, "to allow the Dark Lord's people access."  Absently, he reached up with his good hand to preen his fingers through Caius's feathers, then stopped abruptly as he realized that the others were watching him.  Perhaps he was ashamed of being caught displaying affection towards the creature in public.  

            Vesta looked mildly surprised for a moment, but then the wrinkle between her eyebrows smoothed out.  "That's right.  You bragged so much about earning a Masters degree in potions so young that'd I'd almost forgotten about your getting a NEWT in Charms."  She chuckled.  "Flitwick must be foaming at the mouth to find out which weak spot you exploited."

            "He can't tell you, Vessie," Minerva interrupted.  "It's classified."

            "Was I asking?"

            "No, you were going to bat your eyelashes at him until he told you."

            "You don't have to protect me from your sister's dubious feminine wiles, Minerva," Snape said dryly.  "I can assure you, no one _ever bats their eyelashes at __me unless they want something."_

            "The Death Eaters and Dementors left when the school's wards came back up," Remus announced, ignoring the byplay.  "Flitwick and Headmaster Dumbledore drove them off.  Well, everyone's expecto patronus spells helped some."

            "Hmm..." Vesta looked thoughtful.  "Pols's account of the end of the battle got a bit… sketchy."

            "Well, things did get rather confused for a bit," Minerva hedged.  "Especially when Remus started lighting the Dementors on fire."

            Two slim reddish eyebrows arched in surprise--but only a little, so as not to cause wrinkles in her forehead.  "Dementors burn?"

            "Their robes do, if you cast an incendiary charm on them," Remus's words very nearly came out in a growl.  Just the memory of those things circling in around Sirius put his hackles up. "They tend to run away when the flames ignite."

            There was a brief silence.  Finally, Vesta stood.  "I suppose that's all I'm going to get from the three of you," she said.  "I can amass detailed descriptions of the fighting from the others--or rather, I can let young Weasley amass them.  He's very good at that sort of thing."  She smiled.  "I've got what I needed to know, at any rate.  That bit about the bite on Goyle's arm could be useful.  A pity it wasn't Lucius Malfoy that our boy here decided to bite, but I suppose one can't have everything."  She bent down to ruffle Padfoot's ears one more time.  "Who's a good boy, then?" she cooed.  "Who's a good biter of Death Eaters?"

            Snape looked as if he would have dearly liked to make some sort of caustic comment, but managed to restrain himself.

            "Are we dismissed, then, Agent McGonagall?" Remus asked.  _Thank goodness we got through that without anybody mentioning Sirius.  He wouldn't have put it past Snape to commit an "accidental" slip of the tongue where his old nemesis was involved._

            "Yes, yes," Vesta said, waving her hand at them in a shooing gesture.  "You're dismissed.  You can go along to dinner or whatever now.  If you pass Weasley on the way out, tell him that he has permission to go visit with his brothers after he's done with his interviews.  If he's discreet, which I'm sure he will be.  He can meet me at the Hogshead later to compare notes."  She shook her head wearily.  "I suppose I'd better call that old bat Trelawney over now.  I just know she's going to tell me that she predicted the whole attack in her crystal ball, or some such twaddle.  I am definitely going to need a drink when all this is over."

            The three of them--four, counting Padfoot--stood up, a procedure accompanied by a series of painful winces on Snape's part.  Caius made a short, fluttering hop from the back of the armchair to Snape's right shoulder, where he immediately began to nibble on the Potions Master's long, greasy hair.  

            Minerva paused for a moment before leaving the charmed Cone of Silence, turning back and extending her hand, somewhat awkwardly, to her sister.

            "Vessie."

            "Minnie."  Vesta took Minerva's proffered hand and shook it.  "A word to the wise, before you go.  Steer clear of men in, ah, my profession.  They tend to have rather short life expectancies."

            Minerva copied her sister's raised eyebrow expression.  "What brought that on?"

            "Oh, just a… feeling.  Call it Unspeakable's intuition.  Not that I don't wish the both of you luck," she added hurriedly.

            "The both of whom?"

            "Nevermind."  Vesta glanced up at Snape through her eyelashes, then turned back to Minerva.  "We'll be seeing you at Tygwers Keep over the summer?  The old place just isn't the same without you there.  For one thing, the mice are getting quite out of hand."  She broke off as Minerva pinned her with a steady glare.  "And it will give Diana a new target for her 'Why aren't you married with brats yet?  You're letting down the McGonagall bloodline,' diatribe."

            "I'll think about it."  

            "Do.  Lovely to see you again, Lupin.  Sev.  The two of us old Slytherins ought to get together for a drink sometime."

            Snape shook his head.  "Retire from the Ministry, Vesta, and I'll consider it.  As long as you work with the likes of Moody and Ms. Black…  And don't call me Sev," he added tightly.  "It's demeaning."

            "If you didn't look so annoyed every time you heard it, I wouldn't."  She winked, and ushered them out of the corner, beckoning to Claire, Sybil, and Vector to come join her. 

            Polaris descended on Remus and the rest as soon as they neared the door. Obviously, she had been waiting to pounce on them the moment they finished speaking with Vesta.  However, regardless of her impatience, she wasn't impetuous enough to blurt out her questions before the ears of half the staff.  She kept silent, her lips pressed into a thin line, until the heavy wooden door swung closed behind the five of them.

            "How much did you tell her?" she demanded as soon as they were safely out of earshot.  "Severus, you didn't mention…" she let her voice trail off.

            Snape glared at her.  "Your brother the escaped murderer?  No, I didn't.  I might not like him, but as long as the Headmaster wants him here, I will keep silent."

            "I trust you didn't conceal anything else?"  Polaris leveled an arctic stare at the three teachers.  Obviously, this new leniency about Ministry policy extended only to protecting her brother.

            "Vesta didn't give us the opportunity," Minerva said.  "She always was perceptive, even as a girl."

            "She likes Snuffles," Remus assured Polaris.  "She thinks he's cute.  But she was much more interested in what Severus discovered in the course of his, ah, activities last night than in my pet."

            Padfoot, standing beside Remus, gave him a reproachful look, obviously offended at being referred to as a pet.

            "Now that you know we haven't tattled on your idiot brother," Snape sneered, "why don't you go back inside the staff room and wait to be interviewed like a good Ministry flunky?"

            Polaris's eyes flashed with surprised rage, but she obediently turned back to the door.  Just before she opened it, however, she turned back to deliver a parting remark.

            "Better a 'Ministry flunky'," she said coldly, "than a minion of evil.  Even a former minion of evil."  She closed the door very firmly behind her, before Snape had a chance to respond.

            "Such a charming woman."  Snape's nostrils flared and his wand hand twitched slightly, as if he were thinking longingly of the things he could do to Polaris with thirteen inches of yew and unicorn hair.  "It must run in the family."

            "At least she allowed that you weren't a minion any longer," Remus offered.  He shook his head.  "Twenty-four hours ago, she wouldn't have."

            "Has it really been only twenty-four hours?"  Minerva sighed.  To Remus's ears, she sounded distinctly weary.  She even _smelled exhausted, underneath the scent of the lavender she packed her clothes in.  "It feels as though it's been so much longer."_

            "You cannot begin to imagine."  Snape quite obviously agreed with her.  _He still smelled like pain, plus the usual mingling of wet stone and apothecary's shop._

            They were well past the doorway to the Great Hall by this point, and the sounds of the students talking over supper had completely died away.  Padfoot glanced briefly up and down the hallway and transformed smoothly into Sirius.  With a groan, he stretched his long arms up over his head and arched his back until his spine popped.  "Tell me about it.  There are bits of it I still can't remember."  He paused, and cocked his head to one side slightly in a very dog-like manner.  "And bits of it I wish I didn't.  Did I really tear Nott's whole _throat out?"_

            "Yes," Snape said shortly.  "I'm beginning to think that I've spent twenty years worrying about being eaten by the wrong Gryffindor."

            Remus began intently studying the flagstones.  He could feel the tips of his ears turning pink.  He couldn't remember the incident Snape was alluding to very well, but he rather thought he _had been trying to eat him, or at least, had been trying to eat somebody, and it wasn't a very comfortable memory._

            "Don't worry," Sirius said.  He laid one hand on Remus's shoulder.  "I wouldn't eat _you if I was starving.  I'd rather eat rats.  I do sort I wish I hadn't eaten Nott, though."_

            "You didn't exactly eat him," Minerva temporized.  "But I understand why you feel guilty."

            "But I don't, really."  This time, it was Sirius's turn to inspect the flagstones.  "I mean, I feel sorry for his family an' all.  I s'ppose he must have one.  But I don't feel all that bad about killing him, just about _how_ I did.  If I had it to do over again, I'd still kill him."  He raised his eyes again, looking uncertain.  "What does that make me?"

            "An auror," Snape said flatly.

            "Severus!"  Minerva's eyes took on that familiar "minus five points, young man" look.

            "It takes three dead Slytherins to equal one dead Gryffindor," Snape continued.  "Everyone knows that.  It's basic Ministry arithmetic."

            "Think of bats, Severus," Minerva said.  "Think of eating insects."  _Bats?_  Remus was lost, but the comment seemed to mean something to Snape.

            "Think of being fired," he responded.

            "Bat," Caius croaked.  "Bat bat.  Baaaat.  Ten points from Grif-in-dor."

            "You be quiet," Minerva pointed a stern finger at Caius.  "Unless you fancy spending a few days as a pigeon."

            "I'd forgotten how bloody annoying that thing is," Sirius muttered.  "D'you think it would taste as much like a moldy feather-duster as it looks to?"

            "Yes," Remus said.  He looked more closely at Sirius, and drove on through the attempt to change the subject.  "You really don't feel badly about Nott?"  He could still vividly remember the time Sirius, as a junior Auror, had killed his first Death Eater, and his reaction then had been decidedly different.

            "I think I would've, before," Sirius said, eyes staring off past Remus at something in the middle distance, as if he was looking into last night, or maybe even further into the past, to Voldemort's first rise.  "Things are different now.  More personal.  But I really… I wanted to do it.  To feel his spine snap and taste his blood.  They were after Harry, and they had no _right_."

            Remus felt himself nodding.  It only made sense to defend one's packmates and territory.  He stopped the gesture as soon as he realized what he was doing.  _We're human, not animals.  Or at least, _he's_ human._

            "Makes me wonder just how human I still am," Sirius finished.

            "As human as you choose to be."  Minerva had pulled her attention away from Snape and Caius and rejoined the conversation.  "I've never once pounced on one of Sybil's wretched floaty scarves, despite _years_ of temptation."  She paused.  "Perhaps there's a bit more of your sister in you than you thought.  Not that you're likely to go around casting avada kedavra right and left," she added hurriedly, apparently missing the implied condemnation of Polaris.

            "By what twisted set of moral values is ripping someone's throat out considered less depraved than performing the killing curse on them?"  Snape inquired nastily.

            "It's the difference between out-of-control rage and cold-blooded ruthlessness," Remus said.  Oh yes, there were definitely buried issues here.  The phrase "I am not a monster like you," practically hung in the air, but neither he nor Snape nor Sirius wanted to be the one to say it first.  "Most old-school aurors won't use it, or the other two Unforgivables."

            "It was one of the things that made us us and not them.  We didn't AK people, or crucio or zombie them."  Sirius shook his head.  "There's a quote from some German philosopher about it, about not becoming the thing you're fighting.  Moody used to have it mounted over his desk."

            "What, next to the plaque saying 'Constant Vigilance'?"  Snape mocked.

            "Actually, it was."  Sirius actually cracked a smile, a minor miracle considering that he was addressing Snape.  "And he always took his own advice, too.  He de-bugged his office four times a day, every day, whether it needed it or not.  Or rather, he made his subordinates de-bug it while he supervised.  I know how to remove and re-install wooden paneling."

            The scary thing was, Sirius wasn't making it up.  Every auror Remus had ever met who had worked for Alastor Moody had a similar story.

            The group of them had reached the entrance to the dungeon stairway by this point, and Snape halted by the beginning of the flight.

            "You can go back to the infirmary if you want to, Black, but I'm getting off here.  If I have to listen to five more minutes of Pomfrey's babbling about proper nutrition, I will run mad.  Not to mention that the entire wing smells like disinfectant and all of her pain potion dosages are calibrated for eleven year-olds."

            "Actually, they're not," Remus said.  "I think that's just the ones she gives to you."

            "She rather resents the fact that you never come to her infirmary when sick or injured unless someone physically drags you," Minerva added.  

            Snape sneered, and turned to go.

            "Severus," Minerva ventured tentatively, before he could begin descending the steps, "are you sure you don't want me to cover some of your classes tomorrow?"

            Snape shook his head slightly, rejecting the offer.  "No.  I took enough of a risk being absent today, I can't stay out tomorrow too.  If Longbottom doesn't somehow manage to blow up or dissolve my classroom, the third year Hufflepuffs will."  He started off down the steps, limping slightly.  Three steps down, he paused for moment, looking back over his shoulder.  "Thank you for the offer, though."  And then he disappeared down the staircase, robes fading into the darkness.

            Sirius gaped after him in astonishment.  "Did he just say what I think he said?  Without adding something sarcastic?  Well, aside from the thing about the Hufflepuffs."

            "Just because he's always rude to you doesn't mean that he's unaware that manners exist," Minerva said.  "I do wish he'd decided to take me up on the offer, though."  She sighed.  "Severus never takes sick days.  He wouldn't even when he was a student.  It's very off-putting to have a student half convulsed with bronchitis sitting in the front row of your classroom taking notes.  Especially when the students in the back row keep throwing things at his head."

            Sirius carefully looked at everything except Minerva.  Remus's lips twitched.  _My God, we were horrible when we were twelve.  Protesting to Minerva that Snape had started it by hexing James's spectacles the week before probably wouldn't accomplish anything._

            "He's got the right idea about not going back to the Hospital Wing, though," Sirius said.  "Students keep coming in and out, and Madam Pomfrey mutters meaningfully at you.  Remus, can you smuggle me back into your room?"

            "Certainly."  Remus smiled at his friend, who was beginning to take on a distinctly worn-about-the-edges look.  The black shirt and trousers borrowed from Snape against his will (he was the only staff member tall and thin enough for his clothes to fit Sirius) made him look unnaturally pale, and there were circles under his eyes.  "I've got a package of chocolate frogs hidden in the cupboard."

            Sirius grinned.  "I know."

            "There still a few left, aren't there?"

            "Er, a few, yeah," Sirius answered.

            "Chocolate frogs."  Minerva smiled slightly.  "Wonderful candy.  I've always wondered why they don't make other shapes as well, like chocolate grasshoppers or chocolate mice."  She reached up with one hand to slide her spectacles back up her nose.  "Dinner's almost over, Sirius, so I suggest you change back into Snuffles before the students start wandering the halls again.  I'm going to go and get something to eat before the House Elves stop serving the meal."  She paused, looking thoughtful.  "In fact, I think I had better go now.  I don't even want to imagine what the first and second years are getting up to with no staff members in the Great Hall.  I'm probably going to walk into the middle of a food fight."  She tuned and strode away down the corridor, heels clicking loudly against the stone floor.

            Remus and Sirius stood looking at each other for a moment, listening to the sound of Minerva's footsteps dying away.  Sirius sighed, running a hand through his hair and successfully pulling yet another bunch of strands out of his ponytail.

            "Y'know, I'm really going to be glad when all this is over and I'm cleared.  I'm getting real tired of wearing a collar."

            Remus laughed.  "But it looks so becoming.  Especially when you turn back into yourself and forget to take it off," he mocked.

            Sirius's hand instantly snapped to his throat to discover the circle of brass and leather still fastened there.  "Shit.  I told you you should have gotten me the one with the spikes on."

            "Sirius, I don't really want to imagine you in a black collar with spikes on.  Go discuss that sort of thing with Claire."

            Sirius started to laugh helplessly.  "Stop it.  She's not that sort of woman."

            "Come on, 'Snuffle-wuffles,' let's get out of here before the students come and find us."

^_~

Next up:  The Epilogue, in which Lingering Plot Elements are Tied Up and There is Finally Snogging.

Will it be Snape and McGonagall?  Vesta and Percy (he wishes)?  Claire and Sirius?  Sirius and Remus? (Sorry, this isn't that kind of fic.  Go read "Gravity").

^_~

Thank you again to all my reviewers, who have waited patiently while I went three whole bloody months without posting *grovels in shame *.  The epilogue should not take nearly so long to write.  I hope.

Guess what?  There is now fanart for "Scars," including a picture of the "oranges into lingerie" incident referred to in chapter four.  And Caius.  To find it, go to http://www.geocities.com/elspethdixon20686/fanart.html

**Tarawyn:** Thank You!  Remus's lycanthropy is an interesting challenge when you're doing him in the third person—I'm trying to make it come through without having a giant metaphorical flashing sign saying "Werewolf angst" floating over his head.

**Demeter**: Thank You!  I love Snape too, morally ambiguous bastard that he is (of course, I love Sirius too—I shall convert you yet!).  Draco *is * starting to think, though there isn't going to be any "comes over to the Light Side of the Force and Joins the Trio" in "Scars."  I just don't like seeing him portrayed as two-dimensional spawn of evil.  Ambivalence is so much more fun.  Polaris, well… "bitch" is probably the right word, but she's fun to write.

**Chary**:  Thank You!  Yep, dormouse extract as in the Alice in Wonderland dormouse.  It was the most repugnant-sounding soporific I could think of.  The "Draco breaks the news to Nott" scene just popped into my head, and I had to use it.  Even Bad Guys ™ have families.  

**Millefiori, Nicky, Bitter Bathory, Giesbrecht, miche, Logical Nonsense, Trinity Day, ickle helena:**  Thank You!  I'm so glad that y'all like my characterization (and plot, compliments on plot are always ego boosts).  I try very hard to keep people as close to canon as I can (or at least, close to my idea of canon), since horrible stuff like Mushy!Snape and Girly!Remus annoy me no end.  ****

**Kit Cloudkicker, Faith Accompli, Moonfire**:  Thank You!  Gee, I'm detecting a little hostility toward Pols here ^_~.  Don't worry, she is a bitter, lonely woman who will someday die fighting the forces of evil, so she's already set herself up for cosmic revenge.  Dumbledore could tell her everything that Snape has done for the Light side, but in her mind, it would never completely erase the things he did before switching sides.  She's rather a black & white sort of person.  Shades of grey make her uncomfortable.

**Ozma**:  Thank You!  My description of Poppy's bone-setting and so on was inspired partly by my raging addiction to ER (I firmly believe that Remus Lupin looks exactly like a golden-eyed, greying Noah Wyle), and partly by a scene in Diana Gabaldon's "Outlander"—a historical romance that features the creepiest torture scene I've ever read, revolving largely around a broken hand.  Nott (the student, not the dead Death Eater) is going to show up again in the epilogue.  I really feel sorry for the Slytherins—they get the worst deal of all out of the whole magical civil war.  I imagine it's something like being Southern during the American Civil war.  They're going to lose, going to be reviled by the winners, and can choose between siding with Voldemort and fighting their classmates, or, if they're good, moral wizards and witches, siding against him and fighting their relatives. 

**Forlornhope1865**:  Thank You!  I've had a lot of fun with the chapter titles.  They were inspired by the ones in the book "Dealing with Dragons" by Patricia C. Wrede (the first chapter is called "In which Cimarreen decides that she does not want to be a princess and has a conversation with a frog.").  The next really long fic I start is going to have obscure literary quotes as chapter titles.  On an off topic note, your screen name would have anything to do with the Civil War, would it?

**Pez**:  Thank You!  Actually, the lack of the Trio in this story stems in part from my inability to write a decent Harry (forcing me to use him sparingly).  Plus, the adults and Draco are just so much more fun to work with, since I can play with moral ambiguities and Dark Pasts ™ and other such delightful angsty things.  *Sniff * RedeemedByLove!Draco is too easy.  He needs a better reason than "Harry/Hermione/Ginny is hot" to make him alter his entire system of values. 

**Luna Rose & Pheonix Child, Leila C. Snape, WeasleyTwinsLover112, Annonymous, Andromache Cassandra, ossobucco**:  Thank You!  *grovels more *  I'm really, really sorry that this took so long.  Real life is evil, as are summer vacations.  They take you away from what is truly important in life—mind-melding with Microsoft word!

**Alla**: Thank You!  Just for you, I included two Sirius & Severus conversations, in the Hospital Wing and in the corridor (actually, the hospital wing one was going to happen anyway).  I'm not sure how civil they were, but at least no bloodshed was involved.  Draco is an interesting character to write—definitely not a very nice child, but still a child, not evil incarnate at the age of fifteen.  My pet theory is that he'll be all gung ho for pureblood supremacy until he actually has to get his hands dirty, at which point he'll find himself unable to handle it and will try to back out—which is what I've tried to show here.

**Silent Onion**:  Thank You!  I'm glad I answered your questions about the D.E. attack.  As for the Shakespeare quote… I'm double majoring in English and History, and sometimes it shows.  I got the Latin and the medical info off various internet sites—I enjoy research.  It can be as much fun as the writing sometimes, when the topic is interesting enough.

**Enfleurage**:  Thank You!  I know what you mean about Snape pregnancy plots (or at least, what I think you mean *shudder *  The ones involving interesting and humiliating curses and badly written slash?).  My lack of Dumbledore in the infirmary was as much laziness in not wanting to write him (I couldn't figure out how to fit him into the scene and already had just about everyone else there) as it was intentional, but now that you mention it, he is something of a deus ex machina in HP fanfic, isn't he?  Snape's remark about the Lestranges  *was* intentional, though.  People can do horrible things and still love their families, plus, evil is much more interesting when it has feelings.

**Ballerina-on-fire**:  Thank You!  Yep, lots of Sirius stuff.  He's my absolute favorite character, which is why he has at least a cameo appearance in all of my stories.  I love Caius too.  I actually borrowed him from another fanfic writer (with her permission) because he was the coolest familiar for Snape that I'd ever seen.  In return, I let her borrow Polaris.  I think I got the best part of the bargain.

**RADKA**:  Thank You!  Why Sev & Minnie?  Because to this Jane Austen addict, they just seem made for each other.  I've thought so since I read CoS, long before I knew that Minerva was really 70.  Hey, it's not nearly as old for a wizard as it is for a muggle, and the only other available women are Rosmerta, Sprout, Pomfrey, and Hooch.

**Chochang913**:  Thank You!  Well, I didn't get much writing done in Switzerland, but I did see a flock of ravens/crows on top of Mt. Pilatus that I swear were clones of Caius.  Will Crabbe and Goyle be caught?  Well, the Ministry has a piece of circumstantial evidence on Goyle now, thanks to the dog bite on his arm…

**Elektra**:  Thank you!  I'm so happy that my dialogue comes across as realistic and my characterization as consistent (I needed to hear that.  I've been revising some of the original fiction I worked on during middle school and early high school, and it's ugly—rewrites galore are needed).  The problem with my creative writing teacher stemmed more from poetry than from prose—she (and most of my classmates) weren't to fond of rhymed, form poetry, which is my favorite kind to write.  Snape and Caius?  Well, there's not really going to be any major Caius moment in the rest of "Scars," but I do have an idea for a prequel of sorts involving him.

**Dragon-Slayer 133, Lucille**:  Thank You!  I'm so thrilled that y'all like my work.  Tip:  If you want more good fanfiction stories, try www.FictionAlley.org  They have editors who actually scan fics for grammar and quality before they post them up.

**Aradia**:  Thank You!  Actually, I'm Anglican/Episcopalian, which is where the creepy Death Eater induction in chapter 5 came from (it's based on the Anglican baptismal ceremony).  But I have a thing for Celtic mythology.

**SummerRose**:  Thank You!  You do get a moment of Sirius in leather, if leather collars count.  It's probably not the kind you were thinking of, though.  Personally, I like to picture him in head-to-foot motorcycle leathers, like a dirt track racer *drools * but I couldn't come up with a way to insert that into this fic without completely smashing everyone's suspension of disbelief.

**Liz the Peculiar**:  Thank You!  I love your screen name, by the way.  I suspect it's the way people refer to me behind my back in real life.  I'm as good as Riley?  *Is awed by compliment *  I can't really get into her story, as teacher/student stuff squicks me and her characterization of Sirius is not, erm, not to my tastes, but I recognize talent when I read it.  Plus, her concept of Strega was part of the inspiration behind Polaris, so I owe her something of a debt of gratitude (and her Voldemort went after Snape's hands too, but not in quite as brutal a manner).

**Madoushi clef**:  Thank You!  Yea!  Someone noticed the wrist detail!  I love it when I throw in an insanely subtle little detail and people actually pick up on it.  I'm delighted that you think my Traumatized Trio (Snape, Lupin, and Black) are believable.  I have a deep-seated hatred of the "girlification" of characters that happens so often in some slash fics (don't get me started on my "Girly!Remus" rant, because I can go on for hours).  That bit about whose life Draco will save remaining to be seen—you read my mind and somehow divined his role in my Last Battle fic, didn't you?


	12. Epilogue: In Which Lingering Plot Eleme...

Disclaimer:  This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. The character of Caius the raven belongs to Draquonelle, who has kindly allowed me to borrow him (Vesta McGonagall is hers too, though she owes something of a debt to the Ingrid Berman character in Alfred Hitchcock's "Notorious"). In addition, I got the name Polaris Black for Sirius's sister from someone else's fanfic, but I can't remember whose (her character, however, belongs entirely to me and Draquonelle—and to Victor Hugo, I suppose, since she's based partly on his Inspector Javert).

Posted by:  Elspeth (AKA Elspethdixon, L Squared).

Ships:  Sirius/Claire Sinistra and Snape/McGonagall 

* Authors Note: I'm finished!  I'm finished!  I'm finally finished!  And it only took a year.  In the months since I've started this, I've gone through two semesters of college, begun writing slash, learned HTML, gone to Switzerland, been published, watched all of _Trigun_, learned to read Middle English, and gotten my first kiss.  I swear, it wasn't originally supposed to take this long. *

Epilogue: _In Which Lingering Plot Elements are Tied Up and There is Finally Snogging_.

Percy Weasley snapped his notepad shut with a business-like flourish and stood up.

            "Thank you, Headmaster Dumbledore.  I think that's all the information we require, sir."  He couldn't help but add the honorific onto the end of the sentence, even though he didn't really need to.  There was something about Albus Dumbledore that demanded respect, even though Percy was no longer a student.  If only his superiors at the ministry had that kind of presence.  Mr. Crouch had come closest, but even he hadn't been quite the same.  Dumbledore was horrible disorganized—just sitting in his office had made Percy twitch with the desire to start straightening things, back during his days as Head Boy—but in his presence, one somehow felt that the wizarding world's chances against Voldemort weren't as bleak as they seemed.

            "Excellent, Percy."  Dumbledore smiled, eyes seeming to sparkle even brighter than the dozens of tiny stars and sunbursts on his robes.  The staff room was nearly empty, except for himself, the Headmaster, Madam Pomfrey, Argus Filch, and Professor Binns.  The other staff members had left once their interviews were concluded, but the final interview had dragged on for an interminable amount of time.  Professor Binns's narrative style had not improved in the past year and a half.

            "If that's all, I'll be returning to my patients," Madam Pomfrey said, rising and straightening her skirt.  "If I have any left." She shook her head as she turned to go, muttering to herself.  "It was probably a mistake to let either of them leave.  I swear, next time I'm going to tie Snape to a bed, whether that wretched pet of his likes it or not.  It stole one of my stethoscopes, I know it did."

            Percy decided that that was his cue to go.  "Good-bye, Headmaster, sir, good-bye, Mr. Filch."  

            "Good-bye, Percy," Dumbledore told him.  Filch merely nodded, but it wasn't a particularly unfriendly gesture.  Percy had always gotten on well with the caretaker.  He gone to see him during his first week at Hogwarts in order to review the list of forbidden items Filch kept in his office, and the older man had taken a liking to him straight away.  He couldn't understand why his brothers had so much trouble getting along with him.  Well, maybe he could.  

            "I'm sure my supervisor will contact you, should we need more information," Percy continued, as he made his way toward the door.  

            "I'm sure she will.  Oh, and Percy," Dumbledore added, "you may stop by the Gryffindor common room on your way out and see your brothers, if you wish.  The password is 'quidditch.'"

            Percy thanked the Headmaster and checked his watch.  He did have time for a brief visit, and his mum would appreciate getting some news about Ron, Ginny, and the twins, none of whom bothered to owl home on a regular basis.  _I'll just have to remember not to eat anything George or Fred offers me._

            He climbed the familiar steps of Gryffindor Tower and repeated the password to the Fat Lady.  "Lovely seeing you again, dear," she called as he pulled the door to the common room shut behind him.

            "Percy!"  Ron was seated in front of the fireplace in one of the big red armchairs, playing wizard's chess with Hermione.  He had a truly spectacular black eye, just beginning to turn purple.  "What are _you doing here?"_

            "You've been fighting again!" Percy blurted out, not even bothering to answer Ron's question.  "Mum's going to be so disappointed in you."

            "It wasn't my fault," Ron protested, slipping instantly back into whiny little brother mode.  "Crabbe just went and hit me.'

            "Of course he did," Percy sighed.  "He just up and hit you for no reason whatsoever."

            "Well, yeah."  Ron looked slightly offended that Percy would doubt his word.  "I mean, Dean started it."

            Percy reached up to adjust his glasses.  "Why do I get the feeling that I don't want to know?"

            "Actually," Hermione volunteered, reaching over to nudge a knight to a new square, "Dean really did start things.  He shouldn't have said what he did to Nott.  Though you didn't have to go punching Malfoy in the stomach after he broke Dean's nose," she added, to Ron.  "Professor Grubbly-Plank would have taken care of things.  Really, you're just lucky Snape wasn't in class today."

            "Forget Snape," Fred said from the depths of one of the giant armchairs.  He was sitting in it sideways, feet hanging over the armrest, and had been deeply absorbed in a magazine of some sort, only to shove it hurriedly under the cushions upon Percy's arrival.  "You're all bloody lucky it wasn't McGonagall.  She comes down like a ton of bricks on anyone who bothers students because they're related to dead Death Eaters.  Bill could tell you some real horror stories."

            Percy resisted the urge to take his glasses off and pinch the bridge of his nose.  He could feel a headache coming on.  His mother would expect a full report on his siblings' welfare tonight, and this was not going to make her happy.  _Well, Mum, Ron got into a giant, free-for-all of a row with the Slytherins, and Fred's reading inappropriate magazines.  Not precisely what Molly Weasley wanted to hear._

            "But all of you are alright, I mean, aside from Ron's eye?"  he asked, not really wanting to hear the sordid details of the fight.

            "Well, mostly."  Ron set one of his bishops down in the space Hermione's knight had just vacated.  "Check," he said smugly, before turning back to add, "Well, except for Dean's nose.  Who'd have thought ferret-boy could hit like that?"

            "I think he means, was anyone hurt last night," Hermione said, frowning at her trapped and menaced king.  "None of the students were, although some of the seventh years were a bit shaken up by the Dementors."

            "Yeah, but George and I are fine."  Fred grinned.  "Tell Mum Harry's a hero.  He conjured up this wicked cool giant stag patronus after they broke into the Great Hall, and helped chase them out.  She'll like that."

            "Yes, I already know."  Percy glanced around the mostly empty common room.  "Where is Harry?"

            "Asleep," Ron volunteered.  "He stayed up all night.  George and Ginny are off doing homework or building bombs, or something.  Want me to go get them?"

            "No, I'll just pop up and say hello.  I need to report in to my supervisor soon."

            "Hey, can you tell us anything secret about last night?"  Fred fiddled with his wand as he spoke, trying to balance it on the tip of one finger.  He was not having any noticeable success.  "Like, say, what happened to Snape?  He was actually absent today."  He snorted.  "George and I had to sit on opposite sides of the classroom, and Professor Grubbly-Plank wouldn't let us touch any of the ingredients.  We tried to complain, but she said it was in the lesson plans that we weren't to be given anything but written work."

            "Agent McGonagall interviewed Professor Snape," Percy answered, trying for just the right touch of quelling sternness.  Unfortunately, it was lost on Fred.  "And even if I knew, I couldn't tell you."

            "Ooooh, secrets.  Fine, be like that.  See if George and I name our next product after you."

^_~

            Claire paused outside of the door to the room Remus and Sirius shared, rapping her knuckles against the dark wood.  After her experience of a few months before, she was always careful to knock before entering.

            "Yes?" Remus's voice was slightly muffled by the thick door, but she could hear the fatigue in it.

            "It's me.  I wanted to see if Snuffles was alright," she explained.  "I didn't really get a good look at him earlier."

            The door was pulled open, revealing a slightly rumpled-looking Remus, a mug of hot cocoa in one hand.  "Widdle Snuffle-wuffles is currently sucking down the last of my hot chocolate."

            "You're never going to let me forget that, are you?"

            Remus grinned, tired face lighting up with a spark of mischief.  "Of course not."

            "Oi, Moony," Sirius called from within the room.  "Who is it?"

            "Claire," Remus called back.  "She's come to give you doggie treats and rub your ears."  He ushered Claire into the room, nudging the door closed behind her with an elbow.

            Sirius was sitting on the couch, a mug cradled in his hands.  He looked even more exhausted than Remus did, skin pale and eyes distinctly bruised-looking.  He still had Snuffles's collar around his neck, like a piece of odd, punk jewelry.  Combined with the long hair and borrowed black clothing, it made him look rather like one of those muggle "Goths."  All he needed to complete the picture was an ankh pendant and a collection of silver earrings.

            "Claire."  He looked up at her through feathery wisps of black hair and smiled.  "Come to check up on the Dementor-bait?"

            Claire could have sworn she felt herself blushing slightly.  "I just wanted to… make sure you were alright."

            Behind her, she heard Remus opening the door again.  "I'll be in my office, if anyone needs me," he said, ducking out of the room before either of them could protest.

            "Our chaperone just left," Claire remarked dryly.  "I think that may be a hint."

            "If it was, he's a bit optimistic about my powers of seduction."  Sirius shifted his mug to a one handed grip and waved the other hand at the vacant half of the couch.  "Come on, sit down.  Have some hot chocolate.  Remus forgot his cup."

            Claire took the offered seat, but left Remus's abandoned cocoa mug alone.  "Are you sure you ought to be out of the Hospital wing so soon?" she asked.  "You looked horrible last night.  So still and white.  I thought you were dead for a moment when Remus brought you back inside."  Claire couldn't repress a shudder at the memory of Sirius's motionless body, spread out on the floor of the Great Hall like a discarded rag doll.  The sight had scared her in a way that few things ever had, leaving a sick, hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach.  When he had followed Snape into the staff room earlier, it had been all she could do not to throw herself down on the floor and fling her arms around Snuffles's furry neck, to make sure that he was all right.

            "If the Dementors really had gotten me, I would be," Sirius said.  "Remus promised."  Then he seemed to realize that what he had just said might not be very reassuring.  "I mean, it's alright.  I'm fine now."

            "You make my blood run cold sometimes, Sirius."  Claire twisted around slightly in order to face him.  "I remember you as the fifteen-year old who stayed up all night with me to watch the Persiad meteor shower, and now you tear Death Eaters' throats out and talk about dying in order to avoid capture as if it were an everyday thing.  Which I suppose it must be, for you."  She smiled, trying to soften the statement so that he wouldn't be offended.  "One thing hasn't changed.  You still claim to be fine when you're obviously not."

            "You know, I think that's the first time you've called me by my name and not said something like 'widdle Snuffle-wuffles' or 'oh sweet Merlin, it's Sirius Black.'"

            "You're changing the subject."

            "Yes."  Sirius leaned back against the back of the couch, closing his eyes.  He had the most extraordinarily, unfairly long eyelashes.  "I don't scare you, do I?"

            "Of course not."  Claire shook her head, forgetting that he would not see the gesture.  "Your sister scares me.  Severus scares me.  Last night scared me.  _You don't."  She scooted closer to him to prove her point, until her shoulder rested against his._

            "You certainly screamed loud enough the first time you saw me untransformed."  Sirius grinned down at her, eyes open again, and slid one arm around her shoulders.

            Claire groaned.  "Will no one ever let me forget that?"

            "You nearly set the rug on fire."  He waved a hand at the oriental carpet covering the grey flagstones.  "There are little scorch marks.  And some of the Gryffindor first years are still convinced that you're going to elope with Voldemort any day now."

            "Let's not talk about him, please."  Claire didn't want to think about He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named at the moment.  She wanted to concentrate on more pleasant things, like the warmth of Sirius's arm around her shoulders, and the way his hair might feel if she ran her hands through it.  "Do you realize that this is the closest we've ever been to each other when you're not in animagus form?"

            "Oh, sorry."  Sirius started to pull his arm back.  "I can move if you want."

            "No, stay," Claire said hurriedly.  "It's fine."  She smiled again, and reached up to fiddle with one earring.  "You know, I'm probably the only Hogwarts alumnus who ever spent the night atop the Astronomy tower with you and didn't at least get a hug or a kiss."

            Sirius smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling.  "Not all of those stories are true, I swear.  Especially not the one about Fuchsia White."

            "I never heard that one.  It must have been from after I graduated.  What did you not do with Fuchsia?"

            "Well, this, for example."  Sirius leaned forward and brushed his lips against her cheek, very lightly.  He straightened again, eyes staring into hers, as if waiting for her to flinch or pull back.  Sirius Black, the man who feared nothing save Dementors, the only beater in Hogwarts history to ever knock a bludger away from a teammate by flinging himself bodily in front of it, the same Sirius who'd once allegedly taken a different girl out riding on his bike every month, was nervous about kissing her.  It was almost cute.  _I don't think I'll tell him that, though.  He'd die of embarrassment._

            "Good," she said.  "Fuchsia was a giggly little twit."  And still staring into those pale, intense blue eyes, she leaned forward, tipped her face up, and returned the kiss--but not on the cheek.

            Sirius was still for a moment, then his arm tightened around her and his free hand came up to cup her face, fingers trailing along her jawline.  Claire did what she had been wanting to do for what seemed untold ages and slid her own fingers into that tangle of black hair, pulling the hair tie out and letting it fall down to frame both their faces.  It was, indeed, as soft as it looked, and it tickled, too, brushing against her face like fur.  She decided on the instant that she liked long-haired men.  Sirius tasted like chocolate.  Chocolate, and just a hint of something alcoholic, whatever the cocoa had been spiked with.

            They both kept their eyes open the entire time, blue gazing into blue.  Sirius's eyes were fascinating; lattices of blue and grey and silver, with a darker ring around the edge of the iris.  They were a huskies' eyes, canine eyes, Padfoot's eyes.  Claire found herself wondering fancifully if they shined in the dark, the way Remus's did.

            The kiss could have lasted seconds, it could have lasted hours.  The two of them finally drew apart, still watching each other.  Claire continued to play with a handful of Sirius's hair, brushing the ends of the strands against her fingers, and he left his right arm very firmly in place about her shoulders.

            "I never did that with Fuchsia either."  Sirius's voice was soft, weighted with fatigue, but still teasing.  The distinctive sound of London's East End slipped in around the edges of his words, traces of the accent his years at Hogwarts had never completely eradicated.  "You sure about this?"

            "About what?"  Claire settled herself against Sirius's side, leaning her head against his shoulder.  "The kiss, or the whole package?"

            "Both, either."

            "I'm sure.  I'm not a teenager anymore, Sirius.  I know what I'm getting myself into."

            Sirius leaned his head back against the couch cushion again, eyes drifting closed once more.  "I'm wanted for murder, and I think I'm as much dog as I am human, and I have screaming nightmares.  Oh, and I bite.  Just ask Nott."

            "All right, I think that severely unfunny joke needs to die a sudden and permanent death."

            "Severely," Sirius made a little, half-laughing sound.  "Snape's jokes are severely unfunny.  Good pun."

            "You're not allowed to make fun of anyone else's name.  Not with a set of initials like yours."  Claire sighed, dragging the conversation back on topic again.  Holding a serious conversation with Sirius was sometimes like refereeing a quiddich match, trying to keep track of four balls and fourteen players--or four topics and as many tangents--at once.  Changing the subject and deflecting personal questions or uncomfortable topics with humour could be as evasive as Severus's cold silence, in it's own way.  "I know what I'm getting into," she repeated.  "Especially after last night.  I know you've been to Hades and back, and may have to go on the run again any day, but I don't want to waste the time we might have _now."_

            Sirius tightened his hold on her momentarily, a sort of half-squeeze/half-hug, silent acknowledgement.  "Harry comes first.  Always.  You need to know that right off."

            "Somehow, I managed to guess that.  Perhaps it was your willingness to risk capture, exposure, the loss of your human psyche into Padfoot's, and being stampeded to death by teenagers in order to keep an eye on him?"

            "Come on, it's not that dangerous.  It took more than half the term for the secret to come out.  Anyway, Harry needs someone to keep an eye on him.  He's too much like James, rushing into things without telling anyone or thinking about how dangerous they could be."

            Privately, Claire thought that that sounded less like James, who had, after all, been Head Boy, and more like Sirius himself.  "He was in a fight today in Potions, you know.  With several of the Slytherins."

            "Good," Sirius said proudly.  "I hope he flattened them.  I mean," he corrected himself, "that was very wrong, and I'll have to talk to him about it."

            "It will probably just denigrate into a blow-by-blow retelling of the fight, with you offering helpful advice."  Claire reached across and slid her fingers into those of Sirius's free hand.  "Trust me.  Teenage boys do not need any encouragement."

            "Yeah, I remember."  Sirius sighed, relaxing back into the couch.  "You going to stay here a while?"

            "Not indefinitely," Claire answered.  "Remus is bound to be back soon.  His tactfulness only extends so far."  She didn't move, however, but instead merely leaned closer into Sirius.

            "Remus."  Sirius yawned.  "I think he's not so subtly nudging us together."

            "I think you may be right."

            "He and Harry are my alpha and omega, you know.  Pack."  He yawned again, voice a tired mumble.  "The alpha female position's still open, if you want it."

            Claire laughed.  "Are you inviting me to start a relationship with you, or with Remus?"

            There was no answer.  Sirius had fallen asleep.

^_~

Minerva inspected the sheaf of parchments in her hand and sighed.  She really couldn't blame Emma Grubbley-Plank for handing them off to her--Severus's office was a realm few residents of Hogwarts cared to enter, even the staff--but she wished that the other woman hadn't chosen to give her the stack of ungraded essays from the day's potions classes quite so late in the evening.  Well, seven-thirty wasn't really so very late, but after the events of the night before, it certainly felt it.  More than anything else, Minerva wanted a hot, lavender-scented bath and a cup of tea.  Instead, she had been made responsible for Severus's paperwork_.  I really ought to wait, she told herself, __and give it to him tomorrow.  But then he'll be angry that I didn't hand it over sooner, so that he could open class with a blow-by-blow critique of everything that was wrong witht his students' essays.  But if I do__ give it to him now, he'll be annoyed with me for disturbing him.  She sighed.  Sometimes, when dealing with Severus, you just couldn't win._

So here she was, a bare three-quarters of an hour after bidding Severus good-night, hovering outside the door of his office and debating whether or not to knock.  Before she could make up her mind, the issue was decided for her.

"If you are a staff member, stop dithering outside my door and come in," Severus's voice snapped from beyond the door.  "If you are Potter, I suggest you go away before I give you a month's worth of detentions."

Minerva obediently opened the door, rapping on it lightly a fist and poking her head around the jamb.  "It's me.  I'm sorry to bother you, but Emma Grubbley-Plank wanted me to give you these."  She extended the sheaf of essays.  "How did you know that I was out here?"

"You're a Gryffindor," Severus informed her, as if that fact alone were an explanation in itself.  "If anyone from your house comes within five feet of my door, it sets off the wards."  

"Wards," Caius echoed from the corner of Severus's desk.  "Can't come in.  Can't come in.  Pot-ter.  Ten points from Grif-in-dor."  He cocked his head from side to side to inspect Minerva from first one beady, black eye, and then the other.

"Ignore him and come in," Severus commanded.  He was standing behind his desk, in the doorway that led back to his personal quarters--well, actually, it led to a storage closet where the hidden entrance to his quarters was concealed behind a wall of shelves stocked with potions ingrediants.  "Put the papers on my desk.  I'll get to them tomorrow, before classes."

Minerva chose to take the command as an invitation, and accepted it, stepping into the room and placing her burden on the corner of the desk farthest away from Caius.  He seemed to tolerate her rather better than he did most people, but she was wary of pushing his toleration too far.  There were rumours that the creature had once blinded an auror.

As she stepped through the doorway, she thought that she felt a slight tingle run across her skin.  It might have been the edge of Severus's ward, or it might merely have been her imagination.  She had a sneaking suspicion that the magical security system was set in blood, which would make it near impossible for anyone other than a dark wizard or trained auror to detect.  Remus's quarters had acquired a similar set of warning systems at some point during the year.  Fortunately, Auror Black had never inspected them very closely, so she hadn't recognized her brother's handiwork.

"Gryffindor-specific wards," she commented.  "You do realize how paranoid that makes you seem?"

"Not paranoid," Severus objected.  "Merely practical.  Ravenclaws consider cheating a crutch for weak minds, Hufflepuffs would never even think of it, and my Slytherins know better than to try anything so obvious as breaking and entering with me.  Hence, the only students who might try sneaking into my office are Gryffindors."

Minerva shook her head slowly.  "Severus… oh, nevermind, I give up.  Honestly, from the way you act, one would think it was my House which produced all of the criminals and dark wizards."

Severus glared at her.  "Normally, I would take offense at that comment.  At the moment, however, I can't be bothered to summon up the energy."  He waved his good hand at her imperiously.  "As long as you're here, you may as well come in.  There's tea," he added, in what she supposed must have been an attempt at graciousness.

"Thank you."  _Is he actually inviting me into his quarters?  Minerva couldn't suppress a stab of curiosity at the idea of actually seeing the other professor's rooms.  No one save the house elves and possibly Dumbledore had ever been inside them before, as much because Severus, like Filch, seemed to live in his office as because of their owner's antisocial nature.  In the absence of any proof to the contrary, persistent rumours circulated among the younger students that Severus lived in an old torture chamber and slept in a coffin.  _

Minerva wasn't exactly sure what she was expecting--though certainly not a crypt--but the mysterious lair behind the section of swing-out shelving was surprisingly normal, if rather sparely decorated.  Clearly, the man had never heard of throw rugs or wooden paneling.  Or the custom of placing pictures of one's relations on the mantelpiece.  _Then again, I wouldn't want to sleep in the same room as a portrait of Caligula Snape either._

There was a brief awkward moment when the pair of them realized that there was only one armchair in front of the fireplace--and thus nowhere for a guest to sit--but Minerva solved the problem by seating herself on the footstool before Severus could protest.

"So," she began, feeling, for some odd reason, almost self-conscious, "what prompted this invitation?"

Severus hesitated a moment before answering.  He had apparently decided that his tea was more interesting than she was, judging by the way he kept staring into the cup instead of meeting her eyes.  "You looked as if you could use some tea," he said finally, gesturing to the tray sitting on a table beside his armchair.

Minerva noticed that there was a second cup and saucer set out beside the teapot.  She reached over and helped herself.  It was bad manners, but Severus still had one hand out of commission—and might not have thought of pouring for her even had he been uninjured.

"You'll have to drink it plain," he told her.  "There's no cream or sugar, and I'm not about to call a house elf to fetch some.  I'm not in the mood to deal with one of the wretched creatures."  He sneered, and affected a high-pitched, excited voice.  "Squeaky is happy to be bringing the professors milk.  Is the professors wanting anything else?  Squeaky is bringing them tea cakes, and crumpets, and scones, and an entire blasted three course meal."  He switched back to his normal voice.  "We'd never get rid of it."

"Don't be cruel, Severus."

"I wasn't being cruel, I was being accurate."

There was a pause.  Minerva lifted her cup and took a sip of the tea.  Lapsang, a touch stronger than she liked it.  She preferred Earl Grey, usually with cream.

"If this is what you drink at night, no wonder you never sleep."

"I like tea," Severus responded, not quite snapping, "not tea-flavoured water.  Would you prefer a saucer of milk?"

Minerva raised an eyebrow, determined not to take offense.  "Certainly.  Just set it on the floor, please."  

Severus was silent, staring at her.  Apparently, he was so shocked that someone had actually joked with him that he didn't know what to say.

"Oh for goodness sakes, Severus, I'm not insulting your choice of tea.  I'm trying to make conversation."

"Oh."  Severus considered this for a moment.  "What did you wish to converse about?"

Minerva set her teacup down and sighed.  "Nothing, everything.  I don't know.  How glad we both are that last night is over with.  How annoying Sirius's sister is.  How much I want to throttle Albus for asking you to go out and risk your neck spying on a vicious lunatic who tortures his subordinates, and want to throttle you for actually going.  How much Percy Weasley has grown since he graduated.  How much make-up my sister wears.  Anything."

"You worry about me?"  Severus sounded surprised.  "Is that why you stayed with me last night?"

"Of course I do!" The words burst out before she could stop them.  "I've worried about you since you were sixteen.  You're a horrible, anti-social, unpleasant man, but I don't want you to die!"

Caius let out a squawk at the unexpected shout and beat his wings once, nearly taking off from the back of Severus's chair.  "Meow.  Meow.  Ten points for Grif-in-dor."

"And I swear you taught him to say that," she added.

"I didn't.  The only thing I ever taught him was my name, and I regret teaching him that.  He picks it up on his own."  He did not look at her.  She did not look at him.  They both studied their teacups intently and pretended that her outburst of a moment before had not occurred.  The cups were bone china, Minerva noted.  Off-white, with little gold rims around the top and the Hogwarts crest on the side.  _Severus really ought to have his own tea set, instead of using the school's china.  Oh God, why did I say that?_

"Do you really find me horrible and unpleasant?"

"Yes!" Minerva said forcefully.  "You bully students, and play favourites, and smirk unbearably whenever your House wins the Quiddich Cup.  And I think you stand in front of the mirror in your spare time and practice sneering."

"_I_ play favourites?  If Potter were a Slytherin, you would have had him kicked out of Hogwarts by now."

"If Potter were a Slytherin, you'd like him."

"No I wouldn't."  

"You like Malfoy."

"Malfoy likes my class," Severus half-snarled.  "And some teacher has to be supportive of him, or he's going to turn into a bitter, vengeful young man on a one way track to Azkaban."

There wasn't really much that one could say to that, especially when one recognized it for the subtle dig that it was.  "I really could kill Azrael Bale," she finally managed.  "Of all the times to have someone like that as head of Slytherin…  I wish I'd listened to Vesta when she told me that we were neglecting all of the Slytherin students, but, well, she was my little sister.  By that point, I had turned tuning out the sound of her affected, non-Scottish, screen starlet voice into an art."

"You're jealous of her, aren't you?"  Severus asked.  He smiled slightly, in an infuriatingly smug way.

"Oh please.  Of course not. 'Sev dahling'…" She let her voice trail off in disgust.  "Who does she think she is?  Morganna LeFay as played by Marlene Dietrich?"

"Where as you're Elizabeth Bennet as played Katherine Hepburn?  An old Katherine Hepburn."

"Better an old Katherine Hepburn than a dead Alan Rickman."

"Who's Alan Rickman?"  Severus looked honestly confused.  As well he might, since his total knowledge of muggle culture came from listening to Franklin Watts's long rants about disco and film noir.  Somewhat unfortunately, their Muggle Studies professor's knowledge of his subject stopped well before 1980.  Or possibly he'd just chosen to ignore everything that had happened after that.

"Nevermind.  It's not important.  He's a muggle actor with a very large nose."

"Why is it that when everyone has run out of ways to insult me, they feel compelled to mock my nose."  Severus reached up and pinched the bridge of said nose, probably an unfortunate gesture, as it only drew more attention to it.  "Surely there's something else about me that people can insult."

"Well, I wasn't being as insulting as I could be.  Alan Rickman is actually rather good looking."  _Oh dear.  Why did I say that?_

"So is Katherine Hepburn.  At least, she doesn't look that bad in Watts's vintage film posters."

Minerva sighed.  "I've seen his collection of Emma Peel merchandise.  I don't even want to imaging what this poster looked like."

"Who is Emma Peel?"

"The one in the skin-tight black leather."  She shook her head.  "The muggle media presents a very demeaning portrait of women."

"I don't think I've seen these pictures.  He only shows those sort of things to Flitwick."

Minerva started to laugh helplessly.  The mental image of Filius looking at photographs of scantily clad muggle actresses was too absurd to resist.  Surely Severus was making it up.  Then again, she wasn't sure he was capable of being that whimsical.

"I thought we were insulting my sister," she gasped out finally.

"You were insulting your sister," he corrected.  "I was listening to you express your latent and painfully obvious jealousy."

"Of Vesta?"  She tried to sound skeptical, as if to imply that the mere notion was nonsense.  'So, speaking of Vesta, how are things between to two of you?"

"They aren't," Severus said flatly.  "I think the end came when I called her a murdering whore who should have been sorted into Gryffindor."

"My," Minerva cleared her throat.  "That even rhymed.  It lacks your usually subtlety, though."

"I was nineteen, and she had just killed one of my only friends."

"Oh, yes."  Minerva returned to inspecting her tea.  The conversation had drifted into forbidden territory.  She was not Polaris Black.  She was not going to make the admittedly correct statement that it had been Evan's own fault.  For one thing, she knew where the information that had gotten him arrested had come from.  She also remembered the rather ugly scene a few days afterwards when the informant in question had tried to quit.  The Ministry, of course, had not let him.  "She was very upset about it.  That was the only time she ever killed anyone in the line of duty."

"Unusual, for an auror," Severus commented.  "I think she's forgiven me for calling her that, since she didn't say anything about it earlier.  I may even have forgiven her for casting that hex on him."  He looked away, reaching up to pet Caius.  Caius was, apparently, an even better distraction than tea.  "I don't think she'll ever forgive herself, though.  And I… To this day I'm not sure I did the right thing.  I wonder if Pettigrew ever felt guilty about what he did to the Potters?  Probably not.  He's a Gryffindor.  They always have the gods on their sides."

"You and Pettigrew cannot be compared in any way," Minerva snapped.  "He sacrificed his friends because he was too cowardly to do the right thing.  You did the right thing even though it was hard.  And a bit late."

"We both broke sacred oaths," Severus pointed out.  He gestured at the sling his left arm still rested in.  "Of course, he didn't have anyone write it down on his arm for him to help him remember, which must have made it difficult for him."  

Well, there wasn't much one could say to that.  Conversations with a thoughtful Severus had a way of becoming either disturbing or distinctly awkward.  Often, they were both.

"It's just a scar, Severus."  Minerva reached over to lay one hand on his left shoulder.  "Scars heal."

Severus stiffened.  _I've invaded his twelve-foot bubble of personal space_, she thought dryly.  _Now, he's going to throw me out._

"Not really.  They just fade.  And some don't even do that.  After Dolohov died in Azkaban, the Ministry had him autopsied," Severus said softly.  Minerva blinked, thrown by the apparent complete non sequitor. 

"They found discoloured patches on his radius and ulna.  It's burned into our bones, Minerva.  Literally."  He didn't look at her, or acknowledge the hand she still had resting on his shoulder.  Obviously, he was waiting for her to pull it away and leave.

"That was a needlessly creepy bit of information," she informed him.  "Am I supposed to be disgusted?"

"Most normal people would be."  Severus eyed her in a slightly nonplussed way.  Clearly, she was supposed to have reacted more vehemently.

"I know it's there," she continued.  "I've seen it.  Making a fuss about it won't make it go away."

"You are so practical that sometimes I want to hit you."  His voice was flat, emotionless, making it difficult to tell whether or not he was being serious.

Minerva withdrew her hand, and took another sip of her overly strong tea.  "I don't fight the injured."

"Of course not.  It would be dishonourable."

Minerva felt her lips twitching slightly, in spite of herself.  "You mean, it would be un-Gryffindor-like?"

"One of your eyes twitches every time I use the word 'Gryffindor.'  I thought that perhaps I had better stop."

The smile won.  "It's just that you say it as though it were some sort of insult."

"You mean, the same way all of the other Houses say 'Slytherin'?"

_Ouch._  "You may have a point," she admitted.  

He raised an eyebrow.  The other one wouldn't move, because his eye was still swollen half-way shut.

"May," Minerva repeated.  She was head of Gryffindor, after all.  She had a reputation to uphold.  Although, considering that she was sitting in the Head of Slytherin's personal quarters, sipping tea, it may have been a little late.  Actually, she recalled, it was very late.  And since Severus was a stubborn fool, they both had classes to teach the next day.

"I really ought to be going," she said, setting her teacup down and rising.  She shook out her skirts, sending a black feather drifting to the floor.  "It really is getting late, and I'm sure you must be tired."

"You're fleeing because I won the argument."  Was that actually a glint of humour in one black eye?  

"Were we arguing?  I don't think we were."  She looked at him, still sitting in the armchair with Caius perched over one shoulder like a small, feathered gargoyle.  Severus looked rather gargoylish himself at the moment, all bruises and bloodshot black eyes.  His hair looked even worse than usual.  Poppy had probably washed it while he was asleep and unable to escape her, which meant that it was currently drifting around his head as if possessed of a life of its own.  _He really ought to either cut it all off or start pulling it back like Sirius does.  Of course, he'd never do that, because that's what Sirius does_.  "It was… a rather more enjoyable argument than usual."

"Yes."  Severus started to get up, to see her out, and she gestured at him to remain sitting.

"Don't.  I can find my own way out.  Unless the wards are going to fry me if I go through them without you?"

"That would be against regulations."  He paused for a beat.  "Wait just a second and I'll come with you."  Severus climbed to his feet awkwardly, leaning his weight on his right arm.  Minerva averted her eyes for a second so that she wouldn't have to see him flinch.

When the two of them reached the door, she paused for a second and glanced back over her shoulder.  Caius was still sitting on the back of Severus's armchair, eyeing her suspiciously as if to make sure that she wasn't sneaking out the silver beneath her skirt.  "Meow.  Sev-ah-rus.  Mine."

She winked at him.  He didn't look happy.

"What are you doing to my familiar?" Severus asked suspiciously.

"Severus, just admit it.  He's a pet.  And I wasn't doing anything," she added.

"He is not a pet," Severus said defensively.  "He's very useful."

Minerva began ticking points off on her fingers.  "He doesn't deliver messages, he doesn't help you perform spells, you feed him your potions ingredients, and when he steals things, you lie to Filch and say that the students must have done it.  He's a pet."

"Me-ow," Caius chose that moment to repeat his "name" for her.

"And I still think you taught him to call me that."

"I've told you.  He picks it up on his own."

"Even 'Gilderoy is an ass'?" she queried.

"He's a very intelligent raven."  Severus smirked.  "And he tends to repeat things he hears a lot.  And he doesn't really steal.  He just likes shiny things."

"Speaking of which, you wouldn't happen to have my old spectacles lurking about somewhere in your room, would you?  They just disappeared one day."

"Well, if I were Black, I'd probably tell you that you could come back tomorrow night and check."  His voice was suspiciously dry, in that "am I joking, or insulting someone?" way of his.

"Perhaps I will," she said.  His nose really wasn't so bad at close quarters, she noted.  It gave his face character, of a sort.

"I shall have the house elves bring an extra pot of watery Earl Grey for you.  And a saucer of milk."

"I shall look forward to it," she told him, before bidding him goodnight and making her way up the seemingly endless flights of stairs toward Gryffindor tower.  And the strange thing was, she would.

^_~

The End.  Mostly.  The storyline is continued in "A Terrible Beauty," but I'll warn y'all, it's rather depressing.

^_~

Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who has stuck with me for so long, in spite of my slow writing speed and long gaps between posts.  I've had fun writing this story, and I'm glad some of y'all had fun reading it. *grins * There will be a short author's note added on in a couple of weeks to respond to any reviews of the last chapter, and to reviews of "A Terrible Beauty."

**AndromacheCassandra:**  Thanks!  I'm glad that you like the Sirius/Severus sniping.  About Sirius's less-than-kind adolescence, well, he did try to kill Snape once.  He was probably a horrible, hyperactive, impossible to teach twelve year-old.  Oh, and how dare you say that your stuff isn't good?  "Sirius's Slightly Secret Diary" is hilarious.

**Ozma & Alla:** Thanks!  Yes, Severus and Sirius will eventually learn to respect/tolerate/grudgingly like one another.  They're already halfway there.  Thanks also for the approval of Polaris's continued bitchiness.  Like y'all said, she couldn't get any softer and still be Pols.  *grins * Filch is in here because of the "Squib" stories, you know.

**Coconut-ice agent:** Thanks!  Actually, the reason I do so many of the older characters is that I have trouble writing Harry.  About mailing lists—I don't have one of my own, but I'm _on_ several.  They're all slash, though.

**Kit Cloudkicker:**  Thanks!  Sorry this baby took so long.  Will Sirius be cleared?  Yep.  After "A Terrible Beauty," when a certain person's body is found.

**Giesbrecht, Zetta, & Angel of the North:**  Thanks!  Especially for the compliments on characterization.  That and dialogue are probably what I work on the hardest.

**Bobbi & Zeptron-Zulu:** Thanks!  I'm glad that y'all liked the Sirius & Remus interaction—I tore my hair out over some of those scenes trying to keep this story from edging into R/S slash territory.  It's good to know that I succeeded.

**Sean Mulligan:**  Thanks!  I've already seen the petition, actually.  Several people on my Yahoo groups referred me to it.  I doubt it'll work, though.

**Madoushi-Clef:**  Thanks!  Especially for the constructive criticism.  I'm not sure if I did any better on the description in this chapter or not, but I appreciate the tip.  About the bat thing—Minerva was threatening to transfigure Severus into one, similar to the way Moody turned Draco into a ferret.

**Daniz**: Thanks!  I'm glad you like Pols and Caius.  * grins sheepishly * Caius was actually invented by a friend of mine, so I can't really take credit for him.

**Michelle & Luna Daisy:**  Thanks!  You two read this whole thing in one sitting?  * whistles * That's a lot of reading.  Thank you!

**WeasleyTwinsLover1112:**  Thanks!  Remus couldn't neuter Snuffles.  Claire would kill him (and so would Sirius).  I, too, think he'd be cute in a spiky collar, BTW.

**M.E.:**  Thanks!  I'm glad that you thought the baptism thing was cool.  It was just too twisted for me to leave out.

**Netrat:**  Thanks!  Especially for pointing out the two slip-ups.  The second one was intentional—Minerva was exaggerating—but the Wilkes detail I simply forgot to check.  * grins evilly * Remus and Sirius's pre-Voldemort relationship is reeaally interesting in "Gravity," but most of the fun parts of that storyline didn't occur in the "Scars"-verse.


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